/ 


THE^DEA  OF  GOD 

IN  THE   LIGHT  OF 

RECENT   PHILOSOPHY/ 


<§ifforb  lecture* 

DELIVERED   IN   THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  ABERDEEN 
IN  THE  YEARS  1912   AND   1913 


BY 

A.vSETH   PRINGLE-PATTISON     4. 

LL  D  ,  D.C.L. 

TELLOW    OF    THE    BRITISH    ACADEMY 

EMERITUS    PROFESSOR    OF    LOGIC    AND    METAPHYSICS 
IN    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    EDINBURGH 


SECOND  EDITION  REVISED 


NEW  YORK 

OXFORD   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

AMERICAN  BRANCH :  35  WEST  32ND  STREET 
LONDON,  TORONTO,  MELBOURNE,  AND  BOMBAY 

1920 


Copyright,  1920 

BY  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PBESS 

AMERICAN-  BRANCH 


PRINTED   IN   THE  UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 


TO 

MY  WIFE 

AND  THE  DEAR  MEMORY  OF 

RONALD 

OUR  YOUNGEST  SON 

WHO  GAVE  HIS  LIFE  WILLINGLY 

AT  GINCHY  ON  THE  SOMME 

6TH   SEPTEMBER   IQI6 


PREFACE 

DISTRACTIONS  and  anxieties  arising  out  of  the  war  have 
interfered  with  the  preparation  of  these  Lectures  for  the 
press,  but  it  is  possible  that,  at  certain  points,  the  thought 
may  have  gained  in  maturity  by  the  enforced  delay. 

Readers  of  this  volume  who  listened  to  the  Gifford  Lec- 
tures in  1912  and  1913  will  recognize  that,  in  the  main,  the 
material  and  the  treatment  are  the  same.  But  I  have  not 
hesitated,  on  occasion,  to  transfer  a  lecture  or  part  of  a  lec- 
ture from  its  original  place  in  the  series,  when  the  sequence 
of  thought  seemed  to  gain  thereby  in  clearness  and  logical 
coherence.  One  or  two  passages  also,  which  appeared  to 
have  little  or  no  bearing  on  the  argument  as  it  ultimately 
took  shape,  have  been  removed.  A  lecture,  introductory  to 
the  Second  Series,  criticizing  two  recent  essays  on  Religion, 
has  been  omitted.  It  served  at  the  time  as  a  convenient 
illustration  of  the  thesis  of  the  previous  year's  course,  and 
it  was  printed  shortly  thereafter  as  an  article  in  the  Hibbert 
Journal  for  October  1913.  But  the  discussion  has  not 
sufficient  permanent  importance  to  justify  its  retention  here, 
and  its  inclusion  would  interrupt  the  course  of  what  is 
intended  to  be  a  continuous  argument.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  have  tried  to  develop  the  subject  more  fully  at  points 
where  the  original  treatment  had  been  somewhat  hurried. 
This  applies  more  particularly  to  the  lecture  on  '  Time  and 


vi  PREFACE 

Eternity '  and  to  the  criticism  of  M.  Bergson's  doctrine  of 
Time  and  its  implications  in  the  lecture  which  follows. 
Here  what  was  originally  a  single  lecture  has  grown  into 
two.  Complete  success  in  such  a  region  is  unattainable,  but 
I  trust  that  what  is  now  offered  is,  in  some  respects,  a  more 
adequate  handling  of  a  peculiarly  difficult  subject.  In  Lec- 
ture IV,  while  my  view  of  the  relation  of  biology  to  physics 
remains  unchanged,  I  have  added  some  detailed  criticism 
of  recent  neo-vitalist  statements  from  which  I  wish  to  disso- 
ciate myself;  and  the  discussion  of  Pluralism  in  the  later  lec- 
tures has  been  extended  by  including  a  criticism  of  the  views 
of  Professor  Howison,  Dr.  Rashdall,  and  Dr.  McTaggart. 
The  choice  of  a  title  has  caused  me  some  difficulty.  The 
title  eventually  chosen  may  easily  be  condemned  as  too 
ambitious ;  but  it  has  at  least  the  merit  of  comprehensiveness, 
and  it  is  also  the  official  subject  of  the  Lectures  founded  by 
Lord  Gifford.  It  has  the  disadvantage — if  it  be  a  disadvan- 
tage— that  it  does  not  indicate  in  advance  the  nature  of  the 
conclusion  reached.  But  philosophical  labels  are  for  the 
most  part  misleading,  and  the  conclusion  will  mean  more 
to  the  reader  if  he  discovers  it  for  himself.  I  am  especially 
anxious,  however,  that  the  reference  to  '  recent  philosophy  ' 
should  not  lead  anyone  to  suppose  that  the  book  is  merely, 
or  even  primarily,  an  historical  survey  of  opinion  on  the 
subject  with  which  it  deals.  There  are  many  names  men- 
tioned in  the  course  of  the  lectures,  and  many  theories 
criticized,  but  there  is  no  pretence  of  an  exhaustive  survey, 
and  not  one  of  the  names  and  theories  actually  cited  is 
introduced  on  historical  grounds.  They  are  all  employed 
as  a  means  of  illuminating,  either  by  affinity  or  by  force  of 
contrast,  the  constructive  position  which  is  gradually  built  up 
in  the  course  of  the  lectures.  In  short,  although  it  consists 
largely  of  criticism,  the  interest  of  the  book  is  neither  critical 


PREFACE  vii 

nor  historical,  but  constructive  throughout.  This  method 
of  construction  through  criticism  is  the  one  which  I  have 
instinctively  followed  in  everything  I  have  written.  I  do 
not  claim  that  it  is  the  best  method;  I  simply  desire  that 
its  nature  be  recognized. 

In  the  present  case,  when  contemporary  discussion  on 
the  fundamental  questions  of  philosophy  and  religion  is 
peculiarly  active,  the  necessity  is  almost  imposed  upon  a 
writer  of  defining  his  own  position  by  reference  to  divergent 
views  and  other  forms  of  statement.  And  I  venture  to 
think  that  the  value  of  his  work  is  thereby  increased;  for 
only  by  such  mutual  criticism,  and  the  resulting  definition 
of  the  points  of  difference,  can  we  advance  towards  a  com- 
mon understanding.  Readers  of  this  volume  will  note  the 
prominence  given  to  Professor  Bosanquet's  impressive  state- 
ment of  the  Idealistic  position  in  the  two  volumes  of  his 
Gifford  Lectures  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  I  found 
it  especially  instructive,  from  time  to  time,  to  make  Profes- 
sor Bosanquet's  treatment  my  point  of  departure,  because, 
along  with  the  large  amount  of  general  agreement,  there 
was  at  certain  points  a  difference  of  emphasis,  to  say  the 
least,  in  our  ways  of  holding  the  Idealistic  creed.  The  lec- 
ture on  '  The  Criterion  of  Value '  and  the  two  lectures  on 
*  The  Absolute  and  the  Finite  Individual '  may  be  mentioned 
as  examples  of  what  I  mean. 

It  is  possible  that  some  readers  may  think  that  I  have 
drawn  too  frequently  upon  the  poets.  That  is  perhaps  a 
question  of  temperament.  But  my  procedure  was,  at  any 
rate,  quite  deliberate,  for  I  accept  Wordsworth's  description 
of  poetry  as  '  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge  ', 
and  I  am  even  ready  to  be  persuaded  by  Mr.  Yeats  that 
'  whatever  of  philosophy  has  been  made  poetry  is  alone 
permanent '. 


viii  PREFACE 

In  concluding  this  preface,  I  desire  to  thank  the  Senatus 
of  the  University  of  Aberdeen  for  the  honour  they  did  me 
in  appointing  me  to  the  Lectureship.  It  has  enabled  me  to 
bring  together  the  reflections  of  many  years,  and  I  have 
striven,  in  return,  to  give  them  of  my  best. 

To  my  brother,  Professor  James  Seth,  who  read  the  lec- 
tures in  manuscript,  and  to  Professor  H.  R.  Mackintosh,  of 
New  College,  Edinburgh,  and  Mr.  H.  F.  Hallett,  M.A.,  who 
read  the  whole  in  proof,  my  warm  thanks  are  also  due  for 
their  ready  help  and  valuable  suggestions. 

UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBURGH, 
December  20,  1916. 

The  reception  accorded  to  these  Lectures  encourages  me 
to  hope  that  the  book  may  continue  to  be  found  of  service 
for  some  time.  The  call  for  a  new  edition  has  come  while 
publishers  are  still  hampered  by  difficulties  of  production 
and  by  the  accumulations  of  the  war.  In  these  circum- 
stances it  has  been  decided  to  print  the  present  edition  from 
the  plates  of  the  American  edition  issued  in  1917.  This  has 
made  it  impossible  to  introduce  into  the  text  more  than  ver- 
bal corrections,  but  I  have  been  able  to  add,  by  way  of  ap- 
pendix, a  few  supplementary  notes  referring  to  the  more 
important  criticisms  and  discussions  to  which  the  volume 
has  given  rise.  Any  attempt  at  mediation  in  a  difficult  dis- 
pute is  necessarily  exposed  to  attack  from  both  sides,  and 
this  has  happened  to  my  attempt,  in  the  second  series  of 
Lectures,  to  balance  the  claims  of  the  Absolute  and  the 
individual  or  of  monism  and  pluralism.  But  I  have  met 
with  nothing  to  shake  my  confidence  in  the  fundamental 
positions  and  lines  of  argument  to  which  I  had  committed 
myself. 


CONTENTS 

FIRST  SERIES 
LECTURE  I 

HUME'S  'DIALOGUES  CONCERNING  NATURAL  RELIGION' 

PAGE 

Reasons  for  beginning  with  Hume I 

The  importance  attached  to  the  '  Dialogues '  by  Hume  himself  2 
The  question  debated  is  not  'the  Being  but  only  the  Nature  of 

the  Deity' 6 

Demea's  attempt  to  base  religious  faith  on  philosophical 

scepticism  7 

The  a  priori  argument  dismissed 8 

Concentration  of  the  discussion  on  the  argument  from  design  .  9 
The  criticisms  of  Philo  and  his  anticipation  of  modern  points 

of  view II 

Hume's  tenacious  adherence  to  the  '  speculative  tenet  of 

theism ' 14 

Contrast  between  the  order  of  nature  and  the  record  of  human 

history 16 

Hypothesis  of  a  finite  God  suggested  but  set  aside  ....  19 

Surrender  of  the  moral  attributes 20 

Insignificant  character  of  the  conclusion 21 

LECTURE  II 

KANT  AND  THE  IDEA  OF  INTRINSIC  VALUE 

Hume's   conclusion   determined  by  the   restricted  nature   of   his 

premisses            24 

Kant's  analysis  of  moral  experience 26 

The  idea  of  value  or  worth :  the  good  will 27 

'  A  realm  of  ends ' :  ideological  view  of  the  world  of  nature       .  28 

The  '  postulates  '  of  God  and  immortality 31 

Defects  of  Kant's  statement 34 

The  doctrine  of  the  self-legislative  will 36 

The    idea    of    value    in    Kant's    successors    and    throughout    the 

nineteenth    century 38 


x  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The   philosophical   antithesis   between   Idealism   and   Naturalism      40 

The  objectivity  of  values 42 

The  idealistic  position  not  to  be  staked  on  any  minor  issue       .       .      43 


LECTURE  III 

THE  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  DUEL  BETWEEN 
IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM 

The  protest  of  '  the  heart' against  the  reason 47 

The  Kantian  separation  between  Knowledge  and  Belief  .  .  48 

Lange's  History  of  Materialism  and  the  '  flight  to  the  ideal '  .  52 
Lotze's  protest  against  materialistic  dogmatism :  '  the  world 

of  forms  '  and  '  the  world  of  values  ' 54 

Ritschl's  repudiation  of  metaphysics 56 

Spencer's  Unknowable  as  the  reconciliation  of  religion  and 

science 58 

Mr.  Balfour's  argument:  its  sceptical  and  constructive  aspects  60 
The  disparagement  of  reason :  danger  of  so  presenting  the 

principle   of   value 62 

LECTURE  IV 
THE  LIBERATING  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY 

The  relations  of  philosophy  and  the  sciences 66 

Biology  and  physics 68 

The  claim  of  biology  to  use  its  own  categories 71 

The  organism  as  a  self-maintaining  whole 73 

Criticism  of  Neo-vitalistic  statements 77 

Re-interpretation  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution 81 

Revival  of  general  interest  in  philosophy 86 

LECTURE  V 
THE  LOWER  AND  THE  HIGHER  NATURALISM 

Ambiguity  of  the  term  Naturalism 88 

A  defence  of  order  and  continuity  against  an  arbitrary  Super- 
naturalism          ...  89 

Illusory    '  explanation '    of    the    more    developed    by    the    less 

developed  91 

Transition  in  nature  from  one  order  of  facts  to  another         .       .  93 

The  question  of  the  '  origin '  of  life      .,,..,.  98 


CONTENTS  xi 

PAGE 

The  passage  from  perception  and  association  to  the  conceptual 

reason 100 

Continuity  of  process  does  not  exclude  the  emergence  of  real 

differences 103 

The  meaning  of  potentiality 106 

Philosophy  as  criticism  of  categories 108 


LECTURE  VI 
MAN  AS  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD 

Manufactured  difficulties  as  to  the  subjectivity  or  relativity  of 

knowledge no 

Cognition    conceived  "as    the    '  barren    rehearsal '    of    a    finished 

reality 113 

Relatedness  versus  Relativity 115 

The  epistemological  problem  in  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Kant      .       .116 

The  objectivity  of  the  secondary  qualities 120 

Professor  Laurie's  statement  of  philosophical  Realism       .       .       .  122 
The  evolution  of  the  sense-organs  as  part  of  nature's  purpose  of 

self-revelation  126 

The  same  principle  applies  to  the  aesthetic  qualities    ....  127 


LECTURE  VII 

ETHICAL  MAN:  THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY 

The  ethical  -versus  the  cosmic  process 132 

The  Religion  of  Humanity,  as  a  merely  'subjective  synthesis', 

follows    from    this    dualism 133 

Comte's  phenomenalism  depends  on  a  false  idea  of  metaphysics     135 
Vital    truths    of    Comte's    religious    doctrine:     (a)    the    central 
function   assigned   to   religion    in   human   history;    (&)    the 
insistence  on  the  moral  qualities  as  the  only  fit  objects  of 
love  and  worship;  (c)  the  organic  life  of  Humanity      .       .     137 

Humanity  taken  as  a  species  of  finite  Absolute 145 

Impossibility     of     thus     isolating     Humanity     illustrated     from 

Comte  himself 146 

His   subordination   of   the   intellect   to    '  the   heart '   makes   him 

eventually  false  to  the  scientific  spirit 150 


xii  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  VIII 
POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM 

PAGE 

The   time-process   as   the  progressive   revelation   of   an   eternal 

Reality 153 

The  human  and  the  divine :  Positivism  and  Christianity      .       .  157 

Agnosticism  depends  on  a  false  ideal  of  knowledge      .       .       .  158 

Substance  and  qualities,  essence  and  appearance       ....  159 

Confusion  between  the  unknowable  and  the  unfathomable  .  .  165 
The  Religion  of  Humanity  and  the  worship  of  the  Unknowable 

as  complementary  half-truths 170 

LECTURE   IX 
IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM 

Further  reflections  on  the  Agnostic  fallacy 172 

General  conclusion  reached  in  these  lectures 175 

The  idealistic  doctrine  maintained  does  not  involve  Monadism  or 

Pan-psychism  178 

The  motives  underlying  monadistic  theories  .  .  .  .  179 

The  desire  to  save  spontaneity  and  freedom 183 

Illusory  attempt  to  evolve  the  very  conditions  of  evolution  .  .  185 

Such  freedom  becomes  indistinguishable  from  pure  contingency  186 
A  realm  of  physical  law  required  as  the  milieu  of  the  spiritual 

life 188 

LECTURE   X 
IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM 

Our  conclusion  does  not  involve   Subjective  Idealism  or  Men- 

talism  190 

The  circular  nature  of  Berkeley's  argument 191 

Ferrier's  demonstration  of  an  '  infinite  and  everlasting  Mind ' 

proceeds  on  the  same  lines 193 

Green's  Eternal  Consciousness  195 

The  mentalistic  argument  yields  us  at  best  only  the  empty  form  of 

the  Ego 198 

To  regard  the  material  world  as  self-subsistent,  or  as  a  res 

completa,  is  a  moral  as  much  as  a  speculative  impossibility  .  200 
The  larger  idealistic  truth  admits  of  a  frankly  realistic  attitude 

towards  external  nature  201 


CONTENTS  xiil 

SECOND  SERIES 

LECTURE   XI 

THE  LOWER  PANTHEISM  AND  THE  DOCTRINE  OF 
DEGREES  OF  TRUTH 

PAGE 

The  argument  of  the  First  Series  reviewed 207 

The  reality  of  appearances 216 

But  is  not  this  merely  the  pell-mell  of  empirical  occurrence  over 

again? 219 

The  idea  of  a  system  and  a  scale  of  values  is  essential       .       .       .  220 

Spinoza  on  degrees  of   '  perfection ' 221 

Mr.  Bradley's  use  of  the  principle 222 

Illustration  from  the  world  of  Shakespeare's  tragedies       .       .       .  223 

LECTURE   XII 

THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE:  ITS  NATURE 
AND  JUSTIFICATION 

Mr.  Bradley's  criterion  of  inclusiveness  and  harmony  .  .  226 
Accepted  by  Professor  Bosanquet  in  his  formula  of  individuality 

and  non-contradiction  227 

Formal  and  abstract  character  of  such  a  principle  ....  230 
We  must  argue  from  the  specific  modes  of  our  finite  consciousness 

of  value 231 

Mr.  Bradley's  transformation  of  the  purely  logical  criterion  .  233 

His  unconvincing  defence  of  this  transformation  ....  234 

The  real  defence  is  the  view  taken  of  man  as  an  organ  of  reality  235 

The  inevitable  assumption  involved 236 

The  real  meaning  of  the  ontological  argument  .....  240 

LECTURE   XIII 
THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL 

Ideals  operative  in  experience  are  themselves  part  of  experience  243 

Common  neglect  of  this,  e.  g.  in  Hume's  argument       .       .       .  244 

Descartes's  argument  from  the  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being  .  .  246 
The  cosmological  argument  also  rises  from  the  imperfect  to  the 

perfect 249 

The  Ideal  the  most  real  thing  in  the  world 251 

Solution  of  the  problem  of  immanence  and  transcendence       .       .  253 


xiy  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  XIV 
THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE  FINITE  INDIVIDUAL 

PAGE 

Professor  Bosanquet's  view  of  the  '  formal  distinctness '  of  selves 

as  due  to  '  impotence ' 256 

The  mere  individual  as  a  self-contained  unit  is  certainly  a  fiction    257 

Again,  the  true  life  of  the  finite  self  is  a  finding  of  itself  in 

social  and  universal  interests 262 

But  this  in  no  way  supports  the  idea  of  a  '  confluence '  or  blend- 
ing of  selves 264 

The  individual  as  a  unique  expression  or  focalization  of  the 

universe 266 

Selves  not  '  elements '  of  Reality,  but  '  members '  or  incarnations 

of  the  Absolute .  .270 

The  'adjectival'  theory  of  the  finite 272 


LECTURE  XV 
THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE  FINITE  INDIVIDUAL  (Continued) 

Mr.  Bradley's  view  of  the  plurality  of  souls  as  'appearance  and 

error ' 276 

Resulting  view  of  the  destiny  of  the  finite  self 280 

But   the   individual   is   not   simply   a   very   complex   group   of 

universals 282 

The  origin  of  such  finite  centres  the  only  fact  fitly  describable  as 

creation 285 

Real  difference  and  a  measure  of  independence  involved      .       .  287 

The  testimony  of  our  greatest  experiences 289 

Personality  as  a  formed  will 291 

A  world  of  persons  the  appropriate  End  of  the  Absolute  as  a  self- 
communicating  Life 294 

NOTE  on  Professor  Bosanquet's  use  of  the  social  analogy      .       .  296 

LECTURE  XVI 
THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION 

Ordinary  idea  of  creation  as  an  event  in  the  past      ....  299 

A  phenomenal  regress  cannot  lead  to  a  First  Cause       .       .       .  301 

Cause  as  applied  to  God  must  be  understood  as  Ground  or  Reason  302 

The  relation  of  the  universe  to  God  is  organic,  not  accidental      .  304 


CONTENTS  xv 

PAGE 

Creation  as  an  '  eternal '  act 305 

Creation  '  out  of  nothing '  is  the  denial  of  an  independently  exist- 
ing  matter 306 

Creation  as  manifestation  in  and  to  conscious  spirits       .       .       .  308 

No  existence  of  God  prior  to  and  apart  from  such  manifestation  310 

A  comparison  with  Professor  Howison's  Pluralism            .       .       .  315 

God  must  be  more  than  primus  inter  pares 320 


LECTURE  XVII 
TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE 

•Finite  purpose  implies  desire  for  the  non-existent  and  the  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  ends 323 

_,  Do  these  features  of  the  idea  disqualify  it  as  a  principle  of  cosmic 

interpretation? 324 

-•  The  traditional  argument  from  design 325 

Teleology  as  affected  by  the  modern  theory  of  organic  develop- 
ment   327 

The  idea  of  purpose  becomes  the  idea  of  a  systematic  and  intel- 
ligible whole 328 

The  idea  thus  tends  to  pass  into  that  of  value  or  satisfaction       .  332 

Illustrated  by  Spinoza's  treatment  of  the  subject       ....  333 

Can  value  be  separated  from  activity  or  effort  ? 335 

The  '  eternal  purpose '  of  God 340 


LECTURE  XVIII 
TIME  AND  ETERNITY 

Three  senses  of  the  term  '  eternal '  distinguishable  ....  343 

The  timelessness  of  truth  :  the  Platonic  world  of  Ideas  .  .  .  345 

'  Eternal '  in  ordinary  usage  is  rooted  in  our  temporal  experience  348 

The  perception  of  succession  implies  a  consciousness  of  duration  350 

Eternity  as  a  totum  simul 354 

The  stages  must  be  seen  not  merely  simultaneously,  but  as  elements 

in  a  completed  purpose 358 

The  analogy  of  an  artistic  whole 361 

The  time-process  must  be  retained,  and  yet  transcended,  in  the 

Absolute 363 


xvi  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  XIX 
BERGSONIAN  TIME  AND  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE 

PAGE 

The  spatialized  idea  of  time  and  the  illusion  of  determinism  .  367 
But  the  same  illusion  persists  in  M.  Bergson's  stress  on  the 

contingency  of  the  future 370 

Past,  present,  and  future  organic  to  one  another  ....  376 

As  a  mere  beginning,  the  flan  vital  is  purely  indeterminate  .  .  378 

M.  Bergson's  suggestion  of  a  theistic  background  .  .  .  .  379 
Progress  predicable  only  of  the  parts,  not  of  the  Eternal  Nature 

on  which  they  draw 381 

NOTE  on  M.  Bergson's  doctrine  of  Time 383 

LECTURE  XX 
PLURALISM— EVIL  AND  SUFFERING 

Dr.  Rashdall's  theory  of  a  limited  God 388 

Dr.  McTaggart's  Absolute  as  a  society  of  self-existent  persons  391 

William  James's  Pluralistic  Universe 393 

His  mistaken  conception  of  the  Absolute  as  merely  a  spectator 

of  the  world-drama 397 

The  problem  of  evil  and  suffering 400 

The  arguments  of  Hume  and  Mill 401 

The  conception  of  omnipotence 403 

The  purely  hedonistic  ideal  of  both  thinkers 406 

Failure  of  traditional  theism  to  assimilate  the  most  characteristic 

articles  of  Christian  belief 409 

The  eternal  redemption  of  the  world 412 

The  element  of  casualty  and  'the  arduousness  of  reality'  .  .  415 

The  omnipotence  of  atoning  love 417 


LECTURE  I 

HUME'S  '  DIALOGUES  CONCERNING  NATURAL 
RELIGION ' 

IT  is  just  two  hundred  years  since  the  birth  of  the  greatest 
Scotsman  who  ever  applied  himself  to  these  subjects.  In 
Academies  and  learned  journals,  even  in  the  daily  and 
weekly  newspapers,  during  the  past  year  *  we  have  been 
celebrating  the  bicentenary  of  David  Hume,  and  recalling  to 
mind  the  achievements  which  gave  him  so  conspicuous  a 
place  in  the  history  of  thought.  It  has  seemed  to  me  there- 
fore not  inappropriate  to  begin  these  lectures  by  some  refer- 
ence to  Hume's  pronouncement  on  those  ultimate  questions 
which  Lord  Gifford  had  in  view  in  the  foundation  of  this 
lectureship.  The  more  so  as  we  are  not  left  in  this  matter 
to  deductions,  more  or  less  probable,  from  Hume's  general 
theory  of  knowledge;  he  has  dealt  with  the  theistic  problem 
explicitly  and  at  length  in  his  Dialogues  concerning  Natural 
Religion,  a  work  to  which  his  biography  shows  that  he 
attached  unusual  importance  as  the  deliberate  and  carefully 
weighed  expression  of  his  conclusions  on  the  greatest  of  all 
themes.  Although  Hume's  mode  of  stating  the  question, 
his  handling  of  the  argument,  as  well  as  the  nature  of  his 
conclusions,  are  in  many  ways  strikingly  different  from  those 
which  naturally  suggest  themselves  to  a  thinker  of  to-day, 
I  have  thought  that  these  very  differences  of  formulation 
and  of  emphasis  render  a  statement  of  his  position  valuable 
as  a  background  to  our  further  discussion.  And  although 
I  do  not  intend  these  lectures  to  be  primarily  historical 
in  character,  a  certain  amount  of  historical  orientation  is 

1  The  first  course  of  lectures  was  delivered  during  the  University  ses- 
sion, 1911-12. 


2  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

indispensable,  if  only  to  enable  us  to  understand  how  the 
question  takes  for  us  to-day  the  form  it  does. 

The  history  of  Hume's  Dialogues  is  indeed  curious,  and 
the  fortunes  of  the  work  have  been,  perhaps,  hardly  com- 
mensurate with  the  care  taken  by  its  author  to  ensure  its 
survival.  It  was  written  in  the  maturity  of  Hume's  powers, 
when  he  was  completing  his  revision  of  his  youthful  con- 
clusions in  metaphysics  and  ethics  and  bidding  a  final 
farewell  to  philosophical  speculation;  and  in  his  corre- 
spondence with  Gilbert  Elliot  of  Minto  there  is  interesting 
evidence  of  the  pains  he  bestowed  on  the  balance  of  the 
argument.  The  terms  in  which  he  speaks  of  it  are  more 
appropriate  to  a  personal  document  than  to  a  purely  literary 
performance.  *  'Tis  not  long  ago  ',  he  writes,  '  I  burned  an 
old  manuscript  book,  wrote  before  I  was  twenty,  which  con- 
tained page  after  page  the  gradual  progress  of  my  thoughts 
on  that  head.  It  began  with  an  anxious  search  after  argu- 
ments to  confirm  the  common  opinion;  doubts  stole  in, 
dissipated,  returned ;  were  again  dissipated,  returned  again ; 
and  it  was  a  perpetual  struggle  of  a  restless  imagination 
against  inclination,  perhaps  against  reason.' 

To  Philo  is  assigned  in  the  Dialogues  the  part  of  the 
sceptical  objector — what  Hume  here  describes  as  the  strug- 
gle of  a  restless  imagination — and  because  Philo's  sceptical 
arguments  are  so  entirely  consonant  with  the  general  tenor 
of  Hume's  philosophy,  it  has  been  too  common  to  take  his 
utterances  as  representing  by  themselves  Hume's  own 
attitude  to  the  question  under  discussion.  But  this  is  to 
ignore  both  the  carefully  constructed  balance  of  the  Dia- 
logues and  their  avowed  and  deliberate  conclusion.  Hume 
admits,  in  the  letter  already  quoted,  that  the  part  of  Philo 
is  one  which  admirably  suited  his  temperament.  '  I  must 
confess,  Philo,'  says  Cleanthes  in  the  Dialogues,  '  that  of  all 
men  living,  the  task  you  have  undertaken  of  raising  doubts 
and  objections  suits  you  best.'  And  when  Cleanthes  further 


I  THEIR  SERIOUS  PURPOSE  3 

rallies  his  *  ingenious  friend  '  on  the  '  too  luxuriant  fertility  ' 
of  his  invention,  which  '  suppresses  his  natural  good  sense 
by  a  profusion  of  unnecessary  scruples  and  objections  ',  and 
on  the  '  strange  lengths  '  to  which  his  '  spirit  of  controversy, 
joined  to  his  abhorrence  of  vulgar  superstition '  has  carried 
him  in  the  course  of  the  argument,  we  seem  to  hear  the 
echoes  of  one  of  Gilbert  Elliot's  letters  at  the  time  of  the 
composition  of  the  work.  Hume  replied  to  his  correspond- 
ent that  he  wished  his  friend  lived  near  enough  to  sustain  in 
actual  discussion  the  role  of  Cleanthes,  the  philosophical 
theist.  Cleanthes,  he  explicitly  says,  is  the  hero  of  the  piece, 
and  he  is  anxious  to  see  his  position  strengthened,  if  that  be 
possible,  against  his  own  sceptical  doubts  in  the  mouth  of 
Philo.  He  admits  '  the  strong  propensity  of  the  mind  '  to- 
wards the  theistic  conclusion,  but  he  fears  that  '  unless  that 
propensity  were  as  strong  and  universal  as  that  to  believe  in 
our  senses  and  experience,  it  will  be  esteemed  a  suspicious 
foundation  '.  '  'Tis  here  ',  he  proceeds,  '  I  wish  for  your 
assistance ;  we  must  endeavour  to  prove  that  this  propensity 
is  somewhat  different  from  our  inclination  to  find  our  own 
figures  in  the  clouds,  our  faces  in  the  moon,  our  passions  and 
sentiments  even  in  inanimate  matter.'  There  is  good  evi- 
dence, therefore,  that  Hume's  purpose  in  the  Dialogues  was 
entirely  serious,  and  the  work  as  a  whole  is  perhaps  the  most 
intimately  personal  expression  of  his  views  which  we  pos- 
sess. It  appears  to  be  the  outcome  of  something  like  a  per- 
sonal need  to  probe  the  question  to  the  bottom,  and  to  set 
down  as  carefully  and  dispassionately  as  possible  both  the 
positive  and  the  negative  results. 

This  is  the  view  which  is  naturally  suggested  by  the  his- 
tory of  the  manuscript  and  the  deliberate  publication  of  the 
volume  as  the  philosopher's  last  bequest  to  the  world  he  was 
leaving.  For  twenty-seven  years  Hume  kept  the  manu- 
script by  him.  Rumours  of  the  existence  of  such  a  work 
by  '  the  terrible  David '  had  got  abroad.  Its  negative 


4  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

results  were  exaggerated  by  a  natural  enough  inference,  and 
its  possible  appearance  was  regarded  by  the  upholders  of 
religion  with  undisguised  panic.  When  Hume  sounded  his 
friend  Adam  Smith,  whom  he  had  made  his  literary  execu- 
tor, he  found  him  unwilling  to  incur  the  odium  of  editing 
the  book.  Even  his  publisher,  Strahan,  to  whom  in  conse- 
quence he  transferred  his  manuscripts,  declined  the  task. 
But  with  characteristic  quiet  determination  the  dying  man 
had  provided  even  for  this  contingency,  ordaining  in  a  last 
codicil  to  his  will  that,  if  still  unpublished  within  two  years 
and  a  half  after  his  death,  the  sheets  should  be  returned  to 
his  nephew  David,  '  whose  duty  in  publishing  them  as  the 
last  request  of  his  uncle  must  be  approved  by  all  the  world  '. 
By  his  nephew,  therefore,  the  Dialogues  were  eventually 
published  in  1779.  The  reception  of  the  book  was  a  some- 
what ironic  commentary  upon  the  alarm  of  the  orthodox 
and  the  elaborate  precautions  of  the  author.  '  The  zealots/ 
as  Hume  calls  them,  seem  to  have  found  the  volume  less 
formidable  in  reality  than  in  apprehension.  Perhaps  the 
delicate  rapier-play  of  the  discussion,  though  touching  to  the 
quick  the  vital  points  of  the  great  issue,  was  at  too  Olympian 
a  distance  from  the  bludgeon-work  of  contemporary  theo- 
logical controversy  to  cause  them  serious  concern.  A  German 
translation,  however,  came  into  Kant's  hands  just  as  he  was 
beginning  the  final  draft  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  and 
his  repeated  references  to  Hume's  arguments,  in  the  Pro- 
legomena two  years  later,  show  how  carefully  he  had  studied 
it.  But  from  that  time  till  this  the  Dialogues  have  hardly 
received  either  from  friend  or  foe  the  prominence  they 
deserve,  both  as  the  sincerest  expression  of  Hume's  personal 
position  and  as  a  searching  analysis  of  the  theistic  problem — 
an  analysis  which,  in  spite  of  its  eighteenth-century  man- 
nerisms and  turns  of  phraseology,  significantly  anticipates  at 
certain  points  the  lines  on  which  subsequent  controversy 
has  moved. 


i  THE  CHARACTERS  AND  THE  ARGUMENT  5 

It  is  not  my  purpose  here  to  follow  all  the  windings  of 
Hume's  discussion,  or  even  to  appraise  the  value  of  the 
arguments  used  on  either  side  of  the  debate.  Some  of  the 
more  significant  of  these  we  may  have  to  return  to  later,  for 
Hume's  statement  of  a  position  is  often  classical.  My  pres- 
ent purpose  is  rather  to  bring  out  the  main  lines  on  which 
the  discussion  moves,  the  decisive  considerations  on  which 
it  turns,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  the  precise  nature  of  the 
conclusion  arrived  at.  The  very  differences  between  Hume's 
method  of  stating  the  question  and  those  which  seem  natural 
and  appropriate  to  us,  will  prove,  I  think,  instructive  for 
our  further  discussion;  and  the  strangely  unsatisfying  char- 
acter of  his  conclusion,  even  in  its  most  positive  aspect,  must 
at  least  help  us  to  realize  what  we  mean  by  the  existence  of 
God — what  the  idea  of  God  stands  for  in  our  conception  of 
the  universe  and  in  our  attitude  towards  life. 

The  characters  in  the  Dialogues  are  three  in  number, 
Cleanthes  and  Philo,  already  mentioned,  and  Demea, 
described  in  the  Introduction  as  the  representative  of  *  rigid 
^  inflexible  orthodoxy  '.  Demea  is  introduced  more  as  a  foil 
to  the  other  two  than  as  making  any  serious  contribution  to 
the  determination  of  the  question.  His  treatment  by  his 
fellow-disputants  is  more  or  less  ironic  throughout,  and  he  is 
represented  as  retiring  in  ill-concealed  displeasure  when  his 
two  opponents  reveal  the  extent  of  the  ground  they  hold  in 
common,  and  before  the  remarkable  attempt  made  in  the 
concluding  section  to  reach  a  frank  adjustment  of  their 
differences.  Demea's  diatribes  against  '  mere  human  rea- 
son '  and  '  the  infirmities  of  human  understanding ',  which 
make  the  nature  of  God  '  altogether  incomprehensible  and 
unknown  to  us  ',  are  skilfully  exploited  by  Philo  at  the  outset 
of  the  discussion  in  a  sceptical  or  agnostic  interest,  and  it  is 
certain  that  the  literary  play  of  the  dialogue  would  suffer  by 
Demea's  absence.  But  the  philosophical  interest  of  the  work 
lies  in  the  encounter  of  Philo  and  Cleanthes,  in  the  gradual 


6  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

development  and  '  progressive  restatement '  of  the  argument 
between  them  according  to  the  admissions  of  each  disputant 
to  his  opponent. 

The  modern  reader  who  has  Hume's  popular  reputation 
in  mind,  and  who  remembers  also  the  absolute  scepticism 
which  is  the  outcome  of  Hume's  philosophy  as  a  whole,  will 
probably  be  surprised  to  find  that  '  the  being  of  a  God  '  is 
not  disputed  by  any  of  the  combatants.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  their  common  assumption.  Philo  no  less  than  Demea 
emphasizes  the  position  that  '  surely  where  reasonable  men 
treat  these  subjects,  the  question  can  never  be  concerning 
the  Being,  but  only  the  Nature  of  the  Deity '.  He  accepts 
the  former  as  a  *  fundamental  truth  ',  as  *  unquestionable  and 
self-evident ',  and  recalls  with  approbation  Bacon's  scriptural 
classification  of  the  atheist  with  the  fool.  But  the  reader's 
natural  surprise  at  the  unchallenged  admission  of  so  seem- 
ingly important  a  position  is  soon  lessened  by  finding  how 
little  the  admission  really  amounts  to — to  no  more,  indeed, 
than  a  barely  formal  acknowledgement.  *  Nothing  exists 
without  a  cause,'  says  Philo,  by  way  of  interpreting  this 
fundamental  article  of  agreement,  '  and  the  original  cause 
of  this  universe  (whatever  it  be)  we  call  God,  and  piously 
ascribe  to  him  every  species  of  perfection/  So  formulated, 
the  being  of  a  God  involves  no  more  than  Locke's  jejune 
proposition  *  Something  must  be  from  eternity  Y  and  it  is 
evident  that  everything  depends  on  what  we  are  warranted 
in  concluding  as  to  the  nature  of  the  so-called  divine  Being. 
This  is  the  avowed  subject  of  the  Dialogues. 

The  debate  is  started  by  Demea,  whose  disparagement  of 
human  reason,  in  comparison  with  the  claims  of  authority 
and  revelation,  gives  Philo  an  opening  for  developing  the 
thesis  in  a  purely  sceptical  direction  by  arguments  familiar 
to  every  reader  of  the  Treatise  or  the  Enquiry.  *  It  is  a 

1  Or  the  '  Being  is '  of  Parmenides  and  Spinoza.  Cf .  McTaggart, 
Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  187. 


i  SCEPTICISM  AS  A  BASIS  OF  FAITH          7 

pleasure  to  me  ',  says  Philo,  *  that  just  reasoning  and  sound 
piety  here  concur  in  the  same  conclusion,  and  both  of  them 
establish  the  adorably  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  na- 
ture of  the  Supreme  Being.'  This  attempt '  to  erect  religious 
faith  on  philosophical  scepticism '  (so  Cleanthes  accurately 
describes  it)  irresistibly  recalls  the  similar  movement  in 
English  philosophy  a  century  later,  connected  with  the 
names  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  which  found  its  natural 
sequel  in  the  more  complete  Agnosticism  of  Herbert 
Spencer.  Demea,  like  Sir  William  Hamilton,  offers  to  '  cite 
all  the  divines  almost,  from  the  foundation  of  Christianity  ' 
in  support  of  his  conclusion  that, '  from  the  infirmities  of  hu- 
man understanding,'  the  nature  of  God  is  '  altogether  incom- 
prehensible and  unknown  to  us  '.  And,  like  Mansel,  he  adds, 
that  though  we  '  piously  ascribe  to  him  every  species  of 
perfection  ', '  we  ought  never  to  imagine  that  we  comprehend 
the  attributes  of  this  divine  Being,  or  to  suppose  that  his 
perfections  have  any  analogy  or  likeness  to  the  perfection  of 
a  human  creature.  Wisdom,  Thought,  Design,  Knowledge  : 
these  we  justly  ascribe  to  him  because  these  words  are 
honourable  among  men,  and  we  have  no  other  language  or 
other  conceptions  by  which  we  can  express  our  adoration  of 
him.  But  let  us  beware  lest  we  think  that  our  ideas  anywise 
correspond  to  his  perfections,  or  that  his  attributes  have  any 
resemblance  to  those  qualities  among  men.'  The  reply  of 
Cleanthes  to  this  insidious  method  of  argument  must  be 
accepted  by  any  serious  disputant  as  conclusive :  '  The 
Deity,  I  can  readily  allow,  possesses  many  powers  and  attri- 
butes of  which  we  can  have  no  comprehension;  but  if  our 
ideas,  so  far  as  they  go,  be  not  just  and  adequate,  and  corre- 
spondent to  his  real  nature,  I  know  not  what  there  is  in  this 
subject  worth  insisting  on.  Is  the  name  without  any  mean- 
ing of  such  mighty  importance?  Or  how  do  you  Mystics, 
who  maintain  the  absolute  incomprehensibility  of  the  Deity, 
differ  from  Sceptics  or  Atheists,  who  assert  that  the  first 


8  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

cause  of  all  is  unknown  and  unintelligible?  '  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, till  late  in  the  discussion  that  Demea  suddenly  discov- 
ers that  Philo,  his  assiduous  ally,  is  '  secretly  a  more  dan- 
gerous enemy  than  Cleanthes  himself  ',  and  soon  afterwards 
takes  occasion  to  leave  the  company. 

Before  his  departure  he  had  made  a  second  attempt  to 
bring  the  discussion  back  to  '  that  simple  and  sublime  argu- 
ment a  priori,  which,  by  offering  to  us  infallible  demon- 
stration, cuts  off  at  once  all  doubt  and  difficulty  '.  By  this 
Demea  means  the  traditional  ontological  argument  '  to 
a  necessarily  existent  Being  who  carries  the  REASON  of  his 
existence  in  himself,  and  who  cannot  be  supposed  not  to  exist 
without  an  express  contradiction  '.  But  however  they  may 
differ  otherwise,  Philo  and  Cleanthes  are  at  one  in  per- 
emptorily rejecting  this  mode  of  argument  as  illegitimate. 
Hume  has  elsewhere  anticipated  Kant's  famous  criticism  of 
the  argument,  by  pointing  out  that  existence  is  not  an  addi- 
tion to  the  content  of  any  idea.  And  the  argument,  at  least 
in  its  traditional  form,  has  not  survived  their  joint  attack. 
Here  Hume  is  content  to  rest  his  case  on  the  distinction,  so 
fundamental  in  the  Enquiry,  between  '  matters  of  fact '  and 
'  relations  of  ideas  '.  '  Nothing  that  is  distinctly  conceivable 
implies  a  contradiction.  Whatever  we  conceive  as  existent, 
we  can  also  conceive  as  non-existent.  There  is  no  being, 
therefore,  whose  non-existence  implies  a  contradiction.  .  .  . 
The  words,  therefore,  necessary  existence,  have  no  meaning.' 
Moreover,  if  they  had  any  meaning,  '  why  may  not  the 
material  universe  be  the  necessarily  existent  Being?' 

Hume's  rejection  of  the  conception  of  abstract  or  absolute 
necessity  has  been  sustained  by  subsequent  thought.  Neces- 
sity is  essentially  relative,  and  expressible  in  the  form  of  the 
hypothetical  judgement — If  A,  then  B.  One  fact  may  imply 
another,  so  that  (on  the  basis  of  experience  at  least)  we  may 
reason  in  this  logical  form  from  the  existence  or  nature  of 
one  set  of  facts  to  the  existence  or  nature  of  another  set  of 


I  THE  ARGUMENT  A  PRIORI  9 

facts.  But  that  the  totality  of  facts  which  we  call  the  uni- 
verse should  exist  at  all — or  as  Demea  puts  it,  that  some- 
thing should  exist  rather  than  nothing — that  is  simply  an 
ultimate  fact  to  be  accepted  as  such.  There  may  be  reason- 
ing within  this  Fact  as  to  the  concatenation  and  mutual 
dependence  of  its  parts,  but  with  the  existence  of  the  Fact 
itself  reasoning  has  nothing  to  do.  If  any  one  prefers  to 
use  the  term  universe  for  the  sum  of  created  or  dependent 
beings,  he  may,  of  course,  refund  the  universe  into  God  as 
its  creative  source;  but  the  position  of  affairs  is  in  nowise 
altered,  save  as  regards  the  name  of  the  ultimate  Fact.  God 
does  not  reason  Himself  into  existence ;  He  simply  is.  Mod- 
ern logic  recognizes  the  ultimate  categorical  judgement  which 
underlies  all  hypothetical  judgements  or  logical  necessities; 
and  any  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  rehabilitate  the 
ontological  mode  of  proof  have  really  transformed  it  beyond 
recognition,  and  must  be  dealt  with  on  their  own  merits.1 

The  vital  discussion  in  the  Dialogues  turns  from  beginning 
to  end  round  the  argument  from  design  or  final  causes.  It 
is  introduced  in  Part  II  by  Cleanthes  with  a  certain  impa- 
tience as  the  only  argument  worthy  of  serious  consideration. 
'  Not  to  lose  any  time  in  circumlocutions,  said  Cleanthes, 
I  shall  briefly  explain  how  I  conceive  this  matter.  Look 
round  the  world :  contemplate  the  whole  and  every  part  of 
it :  you  will  find  it  to  be  nothing  but  one  great  machine, 
subdivided  into  an  infinite  number  of  lesser  machines,  which 

1  If  we  speak,  as  we  may  intelligibly  do  in  another  connexion,  of  God 
as  necessarily  existing,  we  mean,  by  the  phrase,  that  the  character  of  the 
world,  as  known  to  us,  is  such  that  it  can  only  have  its  source  in  a  Being 
defined  as  we  ordinarily  define  God.  God,  in  other  words,  is  a  necessary 
hypothesis  to  explain  the  nature  of  our  experience.  This  is  a  logical 
inference  of  the  ordinary  type,  and  it  may  or  may  not  be  legitimate ;  but 
the  necessity  which  we  claim  refers  entirely  to  the  relation  of  the  con- 
clusion to  its  premisses  within  our  knowledge,  and  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  extraordinary  attempt  of  the  ontological  argument  to  deduce 
existence  from  essence,  as  if  God's  nature  could  be  made,  in  some  mys- 
terious fashion,  the  foundation  or  prius  of  his  existence.  '  I  am '  and 
'  1  am  that  I  am ' — the  universe  exists  and  its  nature  is  what  it  is. 


io  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

again  admit  of  subdivisions,  to  a  degree  beyond  what  human 
senses  and  faculties  can  trace  and  explain.  All  these  various 
machines,  and  even  their  most  minute  parts,  are  adjusted  to 
each  other  with  an  accuracy,  which  ravishes  into  admiration 
all  men,  who  have  ever  contemplated  them.  The  curious 
adapting  of  means  to  ends,  throughout  all  nature,  resembles 
exactly,  though  it  much  exceeds,  the  productions  of  human 
contrivance;  of  human  designs,  thought,  wisdom,  and  intel- 
ligence. Since  therefore  the  effects  resemble  each  other,  we 
are  led  to  infer,  by  all  the  rules  of  analogy,  that  the  causes 
also  resemble;  and  that  the  Author  of  Nature  is  somewhat 
similar  to  the  mind  of  man;  though  possessed  of  much 
larger  faculties,  proportioned  to  the  grandeur  of  the  work 
which  he  has  executed.  By  this  argument  a  posteriori,  and 
by  this  argument  alone,  do  we  prove  at  once  the  existence  of 
a  Deity,  and  his  similarity  to  human  mind  and  intelligence.' 
In  reply  to  this  confident  and  somewhat  dogmatic  state- 
ment, Philo,  in  Hume's  own  speculative  vein,  develops 
a  number  of  objections  calculated  to  weaken  the  force  of 
the  analogy,  thereby  reducing  the  conclusion  to  '  a  guess, 
a  conjecture,  a  presumption  ',  or  even  to  impugn  the  validity 
of  the  reasoning  altogether.  Some  of  these  are  repeated  in 
his  other  works,  and  are  of  classical  importance  in  the  his- 
tory of  theistic  controversy.  But  in  Part  III  Cleanthes, 
again  with  a  touch  of  impatience,  brushes  aside  the  objec- 
tions as  due  to  an  affectation  of  scepticism  on  Philo's  part 
rather  than  to  any  real  difficulty  in  the  subject-matter.  It  is 
not  necessary,  for  example,  to  prove  the  similarity  of  the 
works  of  Nature  to  those  of  Art,  '  because  this  similarity  is 
self-evident  and  undeniable  '.  '  Consider,  anatomize  the  eye ; 
survey  its  structure  and  contrivance ;  and  tell  me,  from  your 
own  feeling,  if  the  idea  of  a  contriver  does  not  immediately 
flow  in  upon  you  with  a  force  like  that  of  sensation.'  There 
is,  to  his  mind,  something  at  once  forced  and  frivolous  in  the 
objections  by  which  it  is  sought  to  controvert  or  invalidate 


i  THE  ARGUMENT  FROM  DESIGN  11 

this  obvious  conclusion.  Philo's  '  sifting,  inquisitive  dis- 
position '  suffers,  he  suggests,  *  from  too  luxuriant  a  fertility 
which  suppresses  [his]  natural  good  sense  by  a  profusion  of 
unnecessary  scruples  and  objections  '.  At  this  point  we  are 
told  '  Philo  was  a  little  embarrassed  and  confounded  ',  as  if 
this  shaft  of  Cleanthes  had  gone  home ;  and  for  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Dialogues  this  little  dramatic  touch  is  of  some 
significance.  The  statement  of  Cleanthes  is,  to  a  consider- 
able extent,  Hume's  own  criticism,  as  '  a  practical  man  of 
common  sense  V  of  the  speculative  difficulties  which  he 
makes  it  his  business  to  raise.  As  he  is  reported  to  have  said 
on  a  memorable  occasion : '  Though  I  throw  out  my  specula- 
tions to  entertain  the  learned  and  metaphysical  world,  yet  in 
other  things  I  do  not  think  so  differently  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  as  you  imagine.'  We  find,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
concluding  section  of  the  Dialogues  when,  after  the  depar- 
ture of  Demea,  Philo  talks  with  Cleanthes  as  one  man  with 
another,  that  he  states  his  frank  acceptance  of  the  argument 
from  design  in  terms  as  strong  and  unqualified  as  those  of 
Cleanthes  himself.  But  for  the  present  '  while  he  hesitated 
in  delivering  an  answer,  luckily  for  him,  Demea  broke  in 
upon  the  discourse,  and  saved  his  countenance  '. 

This  diversion  leaves  Philo  free  to  develop  his  sceptical 
and  naturalistic  vein  in  Parts  IV  to  VIII,  some  of  the  most 
characteristic  sections  of  the  work.  He  elaborates  the  diffi- 
culty of  stopping  in  the  causal  regress.  '  A  mental  world, 
or  universe  of  ideas,  requires  a  cause  as  much  as  does  a 
material  world  or  universe  of  objects.'  If  we  say  that  the 
different  ideas  which  compose  the  reason  of  the  Supreme 
Being  fall  into  order,  of  themselves  and  by  their  own  nature, 
'  why  is  it  not  as  good  sense  to  say  that  the  parts  of  the 
material  world  fall  into  order,  of  themselves  and  by  their 
own  nature  ?  ' 2  It  may  be  permissible  in  science  '  to  explain 

1  He  claims  this  title  for  himself  in  the  concluding  section. 
1  Part  IV. 


12  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

particular  effects  by  more  general  causes  ',  but  it  cannot  be 
satisfactory  '  to  explain  a  particular  effect  by  a  particular 
cause,  which  was  no  more  to  be  accounted  for  than  the  effect 
itself  V 

He  returns  to  elaborate  the  contention  that  Thought  is 
only  one  of  a  number  of  '  powers  or  energies  in  nature, 
whose  effects  are  known,  but  whose  essence  is  incompre- 
hensible '.  '  In  this  little  corner  of  the  world  alone,  there  are 
four  principles,  Reason,  Instinct,  Generation,  Vegetation.' 
The  world  resembles  a  living  creature,  an  animal  or  a  veg- 
etable, perhaps  more  than  it  resembles  a  machine, '  and  if  Cle- 
anthes  demands  the  Cause  of  our  great  vegetative  or  genera- 
tive faculty,  we  are  equally  entitled  to  ask  him  the  Cause  of 
his  great  reasoning  principle.'  For,  after  all,  '  reason,  in  its 
internal  fabric  and  structure,  is  really  as  little  known  to  us 
as  instinct  or  vegetation  \2 

In  a  striking  paragraph  Hume .  anticipates  the  evolu- 
tionary view  of  the  gradual  perfecting  of  organic  adjust- 
ments through  the  progressive  modification  of  more  primi- 
tive forms.  '  If  we  survey  a  ship,  what  an  exalted  idea  must 
we  form  of  the  ingenuity  of  the  carpenter,  who  framed  so 
complicated,  useful,  and  beautiful  a  machine?  And  what 
surprise  must  we  feel,  when  we  find  him  a  stupid  mechanic, 
who  imitated  others,  and  copied  an  art,  which,  through  a 
long  succession  of  ages,  after  multiplied  trials,  mistakes,  cor- 
rections, deliberations,  and  controversies,  had  been  gradually 
improving?  Many  worlds  might  have  been  botched  and 
bungled,  throughout  an  eternity,  ere  this  system  was  struck 
out :  much  labour  lost :  many  fruitless  trials  made :  and 
a  slow,  but  continued  improvement  carried  on  during  infinite 
ages  in  the  art  of  world-making.' 3  Applied  to  the  human 
eye,  as  developed  from  the  pigment  spots  of  lower  creatures, 
this  is  the  argument  urged  by  Huxley  and  others  against 
Paley  and  his  Almighty  Watchmaker.  And  in  another 

1  Concluding  words  of  Part  IV.  '  Part  VII.  '  Part  IV. 


I  NATURALISTIC  CRITICISMS  13 

section,  in  which  he  elaborates  a  modern  version  of  '  the  old 
Epicurean  hypothesis  '  of  the  origin  of  the  world  '  from  the 
eternal  revolutions  of  unguided  matter ',  Hume  turns  the 
tables  upon  the  ordinary  teleological  theory  by  a  statement 
of  the  modern  view  of  adaptation  and  the  consequent  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest.  '  It  is  in  vain  to  insist  upon  the  uses  of 
the  parts  in  animals  or  vegetables  and  their  curious  adjust- 
ment to  each  other.  I  would  fain  know  how  an  animal 
could  subsist,  unless  its  parts  were  so  adjusted?  Do  we  not 
find,  that  it  immediately  perishes  whenever  this  adjustment 
ceases,  and  that  its  matter  corrupting  tries  some  new  form.'  * 
Hence  even  the  old  Epicurean  hypothesis,  he  adds,  '  though 
commonly,  and  I  believe,  justly,  esteemed  the  most  absurd 
system  that  has  yet  been  proposed  ',  may  be  made  with  a  few 
alterations  to  bear  a  faint  appearance  of  probability. 

For  himself,  Philo  is  made  to  say  that  he  is  attracted  by 
the  ancient  theory  of  a  world-soul,  and  were  he  obliged  to 
defend  any  speculation,  he  esteems  '  none  more  plausible 
than  that  which  ascribes  an  eternal  inherent  principle  of 
order  to  the  world  '.2  But  the  truth  is  '  we  have  no  data 
to  establish  any  system  of  cosmogony.  Our  experience,  so 
imperfect  in  itself,  and  so  limited  both  in  extent  and  dura- 
tion, can  afford  us  no  probable  conjecture  concerning  the 
whole  of  things.'  This,  says  Philo,  is  the  topic  on  which  I 
have  all  along  insisted.  '  Each  disputant  triumphs  in  his 
turn,'  '  but  all  of  them  on  the  whole  prepare  a  complete  tri- 
umph for  the  Sceptic.'  '  A  total  suspension  of  judgement  is 
here  our  only  reasonable  resource.' 

Amid  all  this  fire  of  criticism  and  brilliant  improvisation 
of  vivid  hypotheses,  Cleanthes  remains  by  his  original  thesis 
quite  unmoved.  He  compliments  Philo  on  the  fertility  of 
his  invention — '  So  great  is  your  fertility  of  invention,  that 

'Part  VIII  (p.  428). 

1  Close  of  Part  VI.  And  it  may  be  noted  that  he  repeats  this  as  the 
most  plausible  view  at  the  close  of  Part  VIII,  where  this  part  of  the 
argument  reaches  its  conclusion. 


i4  HUME'S  '  DIALOGUES '  LECT. 

I  am  not  ashamed  to  acknowledge  myself  unable,  on  a 
sudden,  to  solve  regularly  such  out-of-the-way  difficulties 
as  you  incessantly  start  upon  me :  though  I  clearly  see, 
in  general,  their  fallacy  and  error.'  Looking  at  the  subject 
practically,  in  short,  as  a  matter  for  reasonable  belief  or 
disbelief,  he  invokes  Philo's  own  serious  and  considered 
judgement  against  the  *  whimsies '  he  has  delivered,  whim- 
sies which  he  must  be  sensible  *  may  puzzle  but  cannot  con- 
vince us  V  And  this  appeal  is  not  in  vain,  for  even  before 
the  final  rapprochement,  we  find,  in  the  significant  chapter 
which  follows,  on  the  moral  attributes  of  the  Deity,  that 
Philo  makes  this  unreserved  admission  : '  Formerly  when  we 
argued  concerning  the  natural  attributes  of  intelligence  and 
design,  I  needed  all  my  sceptical  and  metaphysical  subtilty 
to  elude  your  grasp.  In  many  views  of  the  universe,  and 
of  its  parts,  particularly  the  latter,  the  beauty  and  fitness  of 
final  causes  strike  us  with  such  irresistible  force,  that  all 
objections  appear  (what  I  believe  they  really  are)  mere 
cavils  and  sophisms.'  And  this  is  more  than  confirmed  in 
the  frank  give-and-take  of  the  two  disputants  in  the  conclud- 
ing section,  where  Hume  seems  to  lay  aside  his  sceptical 
mask  and  let  us  see  for  a  few  moments  his  individual  belief 
on  the  great  question  in  debate.  '  Your  spirit  of  contro- 
versy,' says  Cleanthes  in  the  opening  of  that  section,  '  joined 
to  your  abhorrence  of  vulgar  superstition,  carries  you 
strange  lengths,  when  engaged  in  an  argument.'  '  I  must 
confess,  replied  Philo,  that  I  am  less  cautious  on  the  subject 
of  Natural  Religion  than  on  any  other ;  both  because  I  know 
that  I  can  never,  on  that  head,  corrupt  the  principles  of  any 
man  of  common-sense,  and  because  no  one,  I  am  confident, 
in  whose  eyes  I  appear  a  man  of  common-sense,  will  ever 
mistake  my  intentions.  You,  in  particular,  Cleanthes,  with 
whom  I  live  in  unreserved  intimacy;  you  are  sensible,  that, 
notwithstanding  the  freedom  of  my  conversation,  and  my 
1  Close  of  Part  VII. 


I  THE  THEISTIC  CONCLUSION  15 

love  of  singular  arguments,  no  one  has  a  deeper  sense  of 
religion  impressed  on  his  mind,  or  pays  more  profound 
adoration  to  the  Divine  Being,  as  he  discovers  himself  to 
reason,  in  the  inexplicable  contrivance  and  artifice  of  Nature. 
A  purpose,  an  intention,  a  design  strikes  everywhere  the 
most  careless,  the  most  stupid  thinker;  and  no  man  can  be 
so  hardened  in  absurd  systems,  as  at  all  times  to  reject  it. 
.  .  .  All  the  sciences  almost  lead  us  insensibly  to  acknowl- 
edge a  first  intelligent  Author ;  and  their  authority  is  often  so 
much  the  greater,  as  they  do  not  directly  profess  that  inten- 
tion.' The  suspension  of  judgement  which  he  formerly 
advocated  he  now  pronounces  impossible.  '  The  existence 
of  a  DEITY  is  plainly  ascertained  by  reason.' 

Inconsistent  as  it  may  appear  with  the  general  tenor  of 
Hume's  philosophy,  there  is  no  doubt  that  this  conclusion  is 
neither  due  to  the  literary  art  of  the  dialogue  nor  is  it  an 
insincere  concession  to  public  opinion.  It  is  to  be  found  in 
all  his  works  in  which  the  question  is  touched,  and  every- 
where it  is  presented  as  the  one  sufficient  foundation  for 
rational  religion  as  opposed  to  the  '  superstition '  which  his 
soul  loathed.  Thus  in  a  note  appended  to  the  Treatise  he 
says :  *  The  order  of  the  universe  proves  an  omnipotent  mind. 
Nothing  more  is  requisite  to  give  a  foundation  to  all  the 
articles  of  religion.' 1  Similarly  not  long  after,  in  a  letter  of 
1744,  he  defines  rational  religion  as  '  the  practice  of  morality 
and  the  assent  of  the  understanding  to  the  proposition  that 
God  exists  '.2  In  the  Enquiry,  in  the  important  section  '  Of 
a  Particular  Providence  and  of  a  Future  State  '  he  says  (in 
the  transparent  disguise  of  an  Epicurean  philosopher)  that 
'  the  chief  or  sole  argument  for  a  divine  existence  (which 
I  never  questioned)  is  derived  from  the  order  of  nature '. 
And  again,  the  '  Natural  History  of  Religion  '  opens  with  a 
distinction  between  two  questions  in  regard  to  religion — its 

1  Book  I,  Part  III,  section  14,  Green  and  Grose's  edition,  p.  456. 
*  Hill  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  vol.  i,  p.  162. 


16  HUME'S  '  DIALOGUES '  LECT. 

foundation  in  reason  and  its  origin  in  human  nature.  '  Hap- 
pily ',  says  Hume,  '  the  first  question,  which  is  the  most 
important,  admits  of  the  most  obvious,  at  least,  the  clearest 
solution.  The  whole  frame  of  nature  bespeaks  an  intelligent 
Author,  and  no  rational  enquirer  can,  after  serious  reflection, 
suspend  his  belief  a  moment  with  regard  to  the  primary 
principles  of  genuine  Theism  and  Religion.'  This  is  pos- 
sibly more  strongly  phrased  than  Hume  might  at  all  times 
be  willing  to  approve  of;  but  the  consensus  of  passages  from 
his  various  writings  puts  beyond  reasonable  doubt  his  sincere 
adherence  to  what  he  calls  '  genuine  Theism  ' 1  and  his 
acceptance  of  the  argument  from  design  as  its  rational  basis. 
Professor  Huxley  speaks  of  Hume's  '  shadowy  and  incon- 
sistent Theism  '.  Further  examination  will  diminish  our 
surprise  at  Hume's  apparent  inconsistency,  while  it  dimin- 
ishes at  the  same  time  our  sense  of  the  value  of  this  '  specu- 
lative tenet  of  Theism  ',2  to  which  he  apparently  assigns  so 
important  a  position  as  the  foundation  of  rational  piety.  It 
will  be  observed  that  the  argument  in  the  Dialogues  has  been 
uniformly  and  exclusively  based  on  the  evidences  of  order 
and  design  in  external  nature,  and  the  conclusion  reached 
was  concerned,  in  Hume's  phrase,  solely  with  '  the  natural 
attributes  of  intelligence  and  design '.  Similarly  in  the 
*  Natural  History  of  Religion '  he  distinguishes  sharply 
between  contemplation  of  '  the  works  of  nature  '  * — which 
irresistibly  suggests  *  one  single  being  who  bestowed  exist- 
ence and  order  on  this  vast  machine  and  adjusted  all  its  parts 
according  to  one  regular  plan  or  connected  system ' — and 
consideration  of  '  the  conduct  of  events,  or  what  we  may  call 
the  plan  of  a  particular  providence  *,  where  the  impression 
produced  is  strangely  different.  Two  sections  of  the  Dia- 
logues (Parts  X  and  XI)  are  accordingly  devoted  to  an 
examination  of  the  phenomena  of  human  life  and  history  as 

1  Dialogues,  Part  XII.  *  Ibid. 

*  Essays,  vol.  ii,  p.  314  (Green  and  Grose). 


i  THE  MISERY  OF  MAN  17 

bearing  especially  on  '  the  moral  attributes  of  the  Deity,  his 
justice,  benevolence,  mercy  and  rectitude  '.  '  Here  ',  says 
Philo,  *  I  find  myself  at  ease  in  my  argument.' 

The  discussion  at  this  point  takes  its  rise  in  a  characteristic 
attempt  of  Demea  to  found  the  truth  of  religion  on  man's 
'  consciousness  of  his  own  imbecility  and  misery '.  In 
Part  X,  he  and  Philo  vie  with  one  another  in  the  darkness 
of  the  colours  in  which  they  paint  the  misery  of  human  and 
all  animal  life.  *  A  perpetual  war  is  kindled  amongst  all 
living  creatures.  Necessity,  hunger,  want,  stimulate  the 
strong  and  courageous.  Fear,  anxiety,  terror,  agitate  the 
weak  and  infirm.  The  first  entrance  into  life  gives  anguish 
to  the  new-born  infant  and  to  its  wretched  parent.  Weak- 
ness, impotence,  distress,  attend  each  stage  of  that  life:  and 
'tis  at  last  finished  in  agony  and  horror.'  And  even  when 
man  by  combination  in  societies  is  able  to  surmount  all  his 
real  troubles,  he  immediately  raises  up  for  himself  imaginary 
enemies,  the  demons  of  his  fancy,  who  haunt  him  with  super- 
stitious terrors  and  blast  every  enjoyment  of  life.  Society 
itself  becomes  the  source  of  the  most  poignant  miseries. 
'  Man  is  the  greatest  enemy  of  man.  Oppression,  injustice, 
contempt,  contumely,  violence,  sedition,  war,  calumny, 
treachery,  fraud;  by  these  they  mutually  torment  each 
other.'  Whether  we  look  at  the  long  catalogue  of  physical 
diseases,  at  the  mental  torments  of  the  passions  and  emo- 
tions, or  at  the  labour  and  poverty  which  are  the  lot  of  the 
vast  majority  of  mankind,  we  are  driven  to  ask  how  a  world 
like  this  can  be  traced  to  a  Being  in  whom  infinite  power 
and  wisdom  are  united  with  perfect  goodness.  '  In  what 
respect ',  says  Philo, '  do  his  benevolence  and  mercy  resemble 
the  benevolence  and  mercy  of  men?  .  .  .  None  but  we 
Mystics,  as  you  were  pleased  to  call  us,  can  account  for 
this  strange  mixture  of  phenomena,  by  deriving  it  from 
attributes,  infinitely  perfect,  but  incomprehensible.'  When 
Cleanthes  unmasks  the  covert  atheism  of  such  an  argument, 


i8  HUME'S  '  DIALOGUES '  LECT. 

and  asks :  '  To  what  purpose  establish  the  natural  attributes 
of  the  Deity,  while  the  moral  are  still  doubtful  and  uncer- 
tain ?  '  Demea  thinks  to  save  the  situation  in  the  usual 
orthodox  fashion.  '  This  world  is  but  a  point  in  comparison 
of  the  universe:  this  life  but  a  moment  in  comparison  of 
eternity.  The  present  evil  phenomena,  therefore,  are 
rectified  in  other  regions  and  in  some  future  period  of 
existence.  And  the  eyes  of  men,  being  then  opened  to 
larger  views  of  things,  see  the  whole  connexion  of  general 
laws;  and  trace,  with  adoration,  the  benevolence  and 
rectitude  of  the  Deity,  through  all  the  mazes  and  intricacies 
of  his  providence.'  'No!'  replies  Cleanthes,  with  a  vehe- 
ment disclaimer  of  this  crooked  logic,  '  these  arbitrary  sup- 
positions can  never  be  admitted  contrary  to  matter  of  fact, 
visible  and  uncontroverted.  Whence  can  any  cause  be 
known  but  from  its  known  effects?  Whence  can  any  hy- 
pothesis be  proved  but  from  the  apparent  phenomena  ?  To 
establish  one  hypothesis  upon  another,  is  building  entirely  in 
the  air.'  He  is  prepared,  however,  to  deny  Demea's  exag- 
gerated pessimism  as  contrary  to  experience.  '  Health  is 
more  common  than  sickness,  Pleasure  than  pain,  Happiness 
than  misery.  And  for  one  vexation  which  we  meet  with, 
we  attain,  upon  computation,  a  hundred  enjoyments.'  But 
Philo  reminds  him  (what  he  should  have  himself  remem- 
bered in  his  pessimistic  disquisitions)  that  it  is  impossible,  in 
strictness,  to  estimate  and  compare  all  the  pains  and  all  the 
pleasures  in  the  lives  of  all  mankind,  or  of  all  living  creatures, 
and  to  weigh  the  one  against  the  other.  Such  a  valuation  of 
life  must  be  matter  of  individual  opinion,  resting  largely  on 
temperament.  But  it  is  not  necessary  for  the  purposes  of 
the  argument,  Philo  proceeds,  to  decide  such  a  question  one 
way  or  another.  '  Why  is  there  any  misery  at  all  in  the 
world?  ...  Is  it  from  the  intention  of  the  Deity?  But 
he  is  perfectly  benevolent.  Is  it  contrary  to  his  intention? 
But  he  is  almighty.  Nothing  can  shake  the  solidity  of  this 


i  A  FINITE  GOD  19 

reasoning,  so  short,  so  clear,  so  decisive;  except  we  assert 
that  these  subjects  exceed  all  human  capacity,  and  that  our 
common  measures  of  truth  and  falsehood  are  not  applicable 
to  them.' 

Urged  in  this  way,  Cleanthes  for  the  first  time  abandons 
his  immovable  attitude.  Up  to  this  point  he  has  simply 
reiterated,  in  the  face  of  every  criticism  and  objection,  the 
cardinal  doctrine  of  natural  religion.  Now,  under  the 
pressure  of  the  argument,  he  confesses  that  he  has  '  been 
apt  to  suspect  the  frequent  repetition  of  the  word  infinite, 
which  we  meet  with  in  all  theological  writers,  to  savour  more 
of  panegyric  than  of  philosophy,  and  that  any  purposes  of 
reasoning,  and  even  of  religion,  would  be  better  served,  were 
we  to  rest  contented  with  more  accurate  and  more  moderate 
expressions  '.  '  If  we  abandon  all  human  analogy ' — as 
Demea  and  Philo  seem  inclined  to  do — he  is  afraid  that  *  we 
abandon  all  religion,  and  retain  no  conception  of  the  great 
object  of  our  adoration.  If  we  preserve  human  analogy,  we 
must  for  ever  find  it  impossible  to  reconcile  any  mixture  of 
evil  in  the  universe  with  infinite  attributes.'  '  But  supposing 
the  Author  of  Nature  to  be  finitely  perfect,  though  far  ex- 
ceeding mankind;  a  satisfactory  account  may  then  be  given 
of  natural  and  moral  evil,  and  every  untoward  phenomenon 
be  explained  and  adjusted.  A  less  evil  may  then  be  chosen, 
in  order  to  avoid  a  greater ;  inconveniences  be  submitted  to, 
in  order  to  reach  a  desirable  end :  and  in  a  word,  benevo- 
lence, regulated  by  wisdom,  and  limited  by  necessity,  may 
produce  just  such  a  world  as  the  present.'  He  invites  Philo 
to  give  his  opinion  of  this  new  theory.  The  theory  is 
familiar  to  us  in  more  recent  times  in  J.  S.  Mill's  post- 
humous essays,  and  may  almost  be  said  to  be  fashionable 
in  contemporary  thought  as  represented,  for  example,  by 
William  James,  Dr.  McTaggart,  and  others.  It  will  there- 
fore meet  us  again.  At  present  we  must  limit  ourselves  to 
noting  Hume's  attitude  towards  it, 


20  HUME'S  'DIALOGUES'  LECT. 

Philo  begins  by  repeating  in  a  memorable  passage  the 
protest  of  Cleanthes  against  the  illegitimate  employment  of 
human  ignorance  as  a  premiss  in  the  argument  of  orthodox 
apologetics.  If  we  are  antecedently  convinced,  on  independ- 
ent grounds,  of  the  existence  of  an  almighty  Intelligence  of 
perfect  wisdom  and  goodness,  the  narrow  limits  of  ouf 
understanding  may  reasonably  suggest  that  the  puzzling 
phenomena  which  seem  so  hard  to  reconcile  with  such 
a  hypothesis  may  have  many  solutions  at  present,  and  per- 
haps for  ever,  beyond  our  grasp.  *  But  supposing,  which  is 
the  real  case  with  regard  to  man,  that  this  creature  is  not 
antecedently  convinced  of  a  supreme  intelligence,  benevo- 
lent, and  powerful,  but  is  left  to  gather  such  a  belief  from  the 
appearances  of  things;  this  entirely  alters  the  case,  nor  will 
he  ever  find  any  reason  for  such  a  conclusion.  He  may  be 
fully  convinced  of  the  narrow  limits  of  his  understanding; 
but  this  will  not  help  him  in  forming  an  inference  concerning 
the  goodness  of  superior  powers,  since  he  must  form  that 
inference  from  what  he  knows,  not  from  what  he  is  ignorant 
of.'  Our  ignorance,  in  short,  '  may  be  sufficient  to  save  the 
conclusion  concerning  the  divine  attributes,  yet  surely  it  can 
never  be  sufficient  to  establish  that  conclusion  '.  Reviewing 
the  facts  in  a  more  measured  and  judicial  temper  than  he  had 
exhibited  in  backing  Demea's  impeachment  of  Nature  in  the 
preceding  section,  Philo's  deliberate  conclusion  is  that  '  the 
original  source  of  all  things  is  entirely  indifferent  to  all  these 
principles,  and  has  no  more  regard  to  good  above  ill  [i.e.  to 
happiness  and  misery]  than  to  heat  above  cold,  or  to  drought 
above  moisture,  or  to  light  above  heavy  ' ;  and  what  applies 
to  natural  evil  *  will  apply  to  moral,  with  little  or  no  varia- 
tion '.  The  hypothesis  of  a  perfectly  benevolent  deity,  of 
great  but  limited  power,  seems  to  him  negatived  by  '  the 
uniformity  and  steadiness  of  general  laws  ',  which  point  to 
the  unity  of  the  Power  in  which  they  have  their  source. 

Philo   must   undoubtedly   be  taken   here   as   the   repre- 


i    SURRENDER  OF  THE  MORAL  ATTRIBUTES    21 

sentative  of  Hume  himself.  Cleanthes  has  appealed  to 
him  for  his  judgement  on  the  case,  and  in  the  subsequent 
conversation  with  Philo  he  makes  no  return  to  the  subject 
by  way  of  controverting  or  even  modifying  the  sweeping 
and,  to  most  men,  staggering  conclusion  arrived  at.1  In 
that  conversation  Philo  still  takes  the  leading  part,  and 
it  is  remarkable,  as  we  have  already  partly  seen,  for  the 
extent  of  the  agreement  which  it  establishes  between  the  two 
chief  disputants,  defining,  as  it  does,  the  extent  to  which 
Philo,  the  airy  sceptic,  admits  the  contention  of  the  more 
solid  Cleanthes — as  a  matter,  if  not  of  demonstrable  cer- 
tainty, at  any  rate  of  reasonable  belief.  But  the  impor- 
tance of  this  agreement  has  already  been  largely  discounted 
by  the  elimination  of  the  moral  attributes  of  God  and  of 
the  whole  idea  of  a  moral  government,  or  moral  order,  of 
the  universe.  As  Cleanthes  expresses  it,  '  to  what  purpose 
establish  the  natural  attributes  of  the  Deity  while  the 
moral  are  still  doubtful  and  uncertain?'  The  significance 
of  the  conclusion  is  still  further  whittled  away  in  the  con- 
cluding pages,  where  Philo  represents  the  whole  controversy 
between  theism  and  atheism  as  mainly  verbal.  The  theist, 
while  calling  the  supreme  cause  Mind  or  Thought,  is  ready 
to  allow  that  the  original  Intelligence  is  very  different  from 
human  reason,  and  the  atheist  ('who  is  only  nominally 
so  and  can  never  possibly  be  in  earnest ')  allows  that  the 
original  principle  of  order  bears  some  remote  analogy  to  it. 

1  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  in  the  concluding  section  he  still 
refers  to  '  genuine  Theism  '  as  teaching  that  man  is  '  the  workmanship  of 
a  Being  perfectly  good,  wise  and  powerful;  who  created  us  for  happi- 
ness, and  who,  having  implanted  in  us  immeasurable  desires  of  good,  will 
prolong  our  existence  to  all  eternity,  and  will  transfer  us  into  an  infinite 
variety  of  scenes,  in  order  to  satisfy  those  desires,  and  render  our  felic- 
ity complete  and  durable  '.  The  phraseology  of  this  curious  passage  strik- 
ingly recalls  Kant's  subsequent  scheme.  Cleanthes  presents  this  doctrine 
as  '  the  most  agreeable  reflection  which  it  is  possible  for  human  imagina- 
tion to  suggest ',  and  Philo,  admitting  that  '  these  appearances  are  most 
engaging  and  alluring ',  adds  these  somewhat  significant  words — '  and 
with  regard  to  the  true  philosopher,  they  are  more  than  appearances '. 


22  HUME'S  '  DIALOGUES '  LECT. 

It  is  only,  therefore,  a  question  of  degree,  and  in  actual  dis- 
cussion it  will  often  be  found  that  they  '  insensibly  change 
sides,'  the  theist  emphasizing  the  difference  between  God  and 
man,  and  the  atheist  magnifying  the  analogy  among  all  the 
operations  of  nature.  What  is  there,  then,  to  hinder  an 
amicable  adjustment  of  their  differences?  'The  whole  of 
Natural  Theology  resolves  itself  ',  in  Philo's  concluding 
words,  '  into  one  simple,  though  somewhat  ambiguous,  at 
least  undefined,  proposition :  That  the  cause  or  causes  of 
order  in  the  universe  probably  bear  some  remote  analogy  to 
human  intelligence.'  '  The  analogy,  imperfect  as  it  is,  can 
be  carried  no  farther  than  to  the  human  intelligence;  and 
cannot  be  transferred,  with  any  appearance  of  probability,  to 
the  other  qualities  of  the  mind.'  The  proposition,  as  he  sig- 
nificantly admits,  is  one  which  '  affords  no  inference  that 
affects  human  life,  or  can  be  the  source  of  any  action  or 
forbearance ' ;  and,  if  so,  '  what  can  the  most  inquisitive, 
contemplative,  and  religious  man  do  more  than  give  a  plain, 
philosophical  assent  to  the  proposition,  as  often  as  it  occurs ; 
and  believe  that  the  arguments  on  which  it  is  established, 
exceed  the  objections  which  lie  against  it?' 

Such  is  the  nature  of  the  attenuated  theism  to  which  Hume 
on  all  occasions  so  carefully  adheres,  and  to  which  he  some- 
times assigns  a  central  importance  in  the  foundation  of  that 
'  philosophical  and  rational '  religion  which  he  so  sharply 
distinguishes  from  '  vulgar  superstition  '.  It  is  here  if  any- 
where— in  the  importance  he  assigns  to  it  rather  than  in  the 
nature  of  the  tenet  itself — that  the  inconsistency  to  which 
Huxley  refers  may  be  found;  for  how  can  a  proposition 
possess  any  religious  significance  if,  as  Philo  truly  describes 
it  here,  '  it  affords  no  inference  that  affects  human  life,  or 
can  be  the  source  of  any  action  or  forbearance  '  ?  Involun- 
tarily we  recall  the  pragmatic  test  of  truth  by  its  practical 
consequences.  And  however  much  questionable  matter  we 
may  find  in  pragmatist  writers  associated  with  this  main 


i  INSIGNIFICANT  CONCLUSION  23 

contention  or  developed  from  it,  we  may  well  ask  ourselves 
whether  a  proposition  which  has  no  practical  consequences 
whatever  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  truth  at  all.  Is  it  not  either 
meaningless  or  (as  Hume  here  says)  at  least  undefined?  It 
is  not  without  reason  that  theist  and  atheist  so  amicably 
shake  hands  over  their  differences,  for  the  proposition  con- 
tains nothing  vital  either  to  affirm  or  to  deny.  Certainly 
this  is  not  what  those  who  have  contended  for  the  existence 
of  God  have  meant  by  that  doctrine.  To  them  it  meant 
undoubtedly  a  doctrine  which,  if  true,  must  profoundly 
affect  our  whole  view  of  the  universe  and  our  conduct  in  it. 


LECTURE  II 

KANT  AND  THE  IDEA  OF  INTRINSIC  VALUE 

WE  have  seen  in  the  previous  lecture  the  vague  resid- 
uum of  theistic  belief  which  is  all  that  Hume  considered 
deducible  from  the  evidence — a  residuum,  however,  to 
which  he  clings  through  all  his  works  with  an  almost 
curious  tenacity.  A  proposition  which  '  affords  no  infer- 
ence that  affects  human  life  or  can  be  the  source  of 
any  action  or  forbearance  '  seems  a  credo  hardly  worth 
contending  for.  If  we  mean  by  God  an  extra-mundane 
entity  whose  super-human  intellectual  powers  are  attested 
by  the  orderly  arrangements  and  nice  contrivances  of  the 
material  scheme  of  things,  but  who  is  indifferent,  so  far  as 
the  phenomena  enable  us  to  judge,  not  only  to  human  weal 
and  woe,  but  also  to  the  aspects  of  will  and  character  which 
seem  to  us  indubitably  the  highest  and  the  best  we  know, 
the  existence  or  non-existence  of  such  a  deity  can  hardly  be 
a  matter  of  human  concern.  It  is  surely  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  prominence  given  to  the  proof  of  intelligence  in 
most  of  the  arguments,  especially  the  older  arguments,  for 
the  existence  of  God,  is  due  not  so  much  to  an  interest  in 
the  merely  cognitive  powers — the  super-human  cleverness, 
as  it  were — of  the  world-artificer  as  to  the  feeling  that,  to- 
gether with  knowledge,  we  may  expect  to  find  in  the  Ground 
of  things  something  akin  to  those  elements  of  our  being, 
rooted  as  they  are  in  intelligence,  in  which  we  recognize  our 
true  dignity  and  worth.  Whether  we  have  just  grounds  for 
believing  in  such  kinship  is  a  question  to  be  dealt  with  in  the 
further  course  of  these  lectures,  but  certainly  without  it  we 
cannot  expect  man  to  be  satisfied,  hardly  indeed  to  be  inter- 
ested. Intelligence  has,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for  the  greater 
thinkers  always  meant  more  than  the  abstract  intellect. 


ii  HUME'S  RESTRICTED  PREMISSES          25 

But  the  nature  of  Hume's  conclusion  was  determined  by 
the  restricted  nature  of  the  premisses  from  which  it  is  de- 
duced. It  is  explicitly  based  upon  '  a  contemplation  of  the 
works  of  nature  ', '  the  frame  of  nature  V  that  is  to  say,  upon 
the  order  and  adjustments  of  the  material  system,  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  human  nature  and  human  experience  in  any  other 
than  its  sense-perceptive  aspect.  Now  Hume  himself  points 
out z  that  '  the  first  ideas  of  religion  arose  not  from  a  con- 
templation of  the  works  of  nature,  but  from  a  concern  with 
regard  to  the  events  of  life,  and  from  the  incessant  hopes 
and  fears  which  actuate  the  human  mind  '.  And  although  he 
contrasts  '  the  religious  fictions  and  chimeras '  thence 
arising  with  '  the  genuine  principles  of  theism  ',  and  counsels 
an  escape  from  the  violence  of  contending  superstitions  '  into 
the  calm  though  obscure  regions  of  philosophy ',  it  is  in 
reality  futile  to  rest  a  philosophical  doctrine  of  God  on 
a  fragment  of  the  evidence  actually  before  us.  It  is  possible 
that  when  we  include  in  our  survey  the  sentient  creation 
and  the  facts  of  human  history — '  the  dread  strife  of  poor 
humanity's  afflicted  will ' 3' — the  whole  may  appear  to  us,  in 
Hume's  memorable  phrase,  '  a  riddle,  an  enigma,  an  inex- 
plicable mystery  '.  But  even  if  we  risk  such  a  result,  how 
can  we  leave  these  facts  out?  They  are  in  the  very  centre 
and  foreground  of  the  picture.  It  may  be,  moreover,  that 
although  they  immensely  increase  the  difficulty  of  the 
problem,  they  alone  supply  us  with  the  hint  of  a  concrete 
and  tolerable  solution. 

The  general  problem  of  philosophy,  as  every  one  knows, 
passed  from  the  hands  of  Hume  to  those  of  Kant,  and  to 
Kant  may  be  traced  the  most  characteristic  modern  forms 
of  the  theistic  argument.  Kant's  precise  position  is,  in  my 
opinion,  no  more  tenable  here  than  is  the  letter  of  his  general 

1  These  phrases  are  repeatedly  used  in  the  first  two  sections  of  the 
'  Natural  History  of  Religion  '. 

1  In  the  '  Natural  History  of  Religion '.  *  Excursion,  Book  VI, 


26  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE         LECT. 

theory  of  the  constitution  of  experience;  but  he  largely 
fixed  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  question  has  been 
discussed  by  subsequent  thinkers.  The  contrast  with 
Hume  stares  us  in  the  face;  for  it  is  an  analysis  of  man's 
moral  experience  which  yields  Kant  his  assurance  of  the 
existence  of  God,  and  it  is  the  moral  attributes,  or  (shall  we 
say?)  the  moral  interests,  of  the  Deity  which  he  is  primarily 
concerned  to  establish.  That  is  to  say,  instead  of  the  com- 
plete indifference  to  natural  and  to  moral  evil  alike  which 
Hume  attributes  to  his  Supreme  Mind,  God  is  for  Kant 
primarily  and  essentially  the  author  and  maintainer  of  a 
moral  order.  The  universe  as  a  moral  system  is  the  last 
word  of  the  Kantian  philosophy.  It  is  not  that  Kant 
denies  those  aspects  of  human  existence  which  leave  upon 
Hume,  as  they  have  left  on  so  many  thoughtful  observers 
since  the  world  began,  the  vivid  impression  of  a  moral 
indifference. 

Streams  will  not  curb  their  pride 

The  just  man  not  to  entomb, 
Nor  lightnings  go  aside 

To  give  his  virtues  room, 
Nor  is  that  wind  less  rough  that  blows  a  good  man's  barge. 

The  moral  indifference  of  nature,  or,  as  Professor  Hux- 
ley more  strongly  phrased  it,  '  the  unfathomable  injustice  of 
the  nature  of  things  ',  is  a  problem  as  old  as  the  Book  of  Job 
and  older.  Apart  altogether  from  moral  desert,  what  are 
we  to  make  of  the  terrible  contingencies  of  nature  to  which 
at  every  turn  man  is  exposed — the  agonies  of  the  quivering 
flesh  or  the  laceration  of  the  spirit  through  his  tenderest 
affections?  All  the  apparently  motiveless  pain  and  misery 
of  the  world,  on  the  face  of  it  pure  contingency — Hume  was 
not  the  first  to  ask  how  such  features  of  our  experience  are 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  traditional  conception  of  '  infinite 
benevolence,  conjoined  with  infinite  power  and  infinite 


ii  KANT'S  NEW  FORMULATION  27 

wisdom  '.  Nor  does  Kant  blink  the  facts.  Indeed,  when  he 
speaks  of  the  human  lot  and  of  the  record  of  human  history, 
the  picture  he  paints  is  so  dark  that  German  pessimists  of 
the  nineteenth  century  have  sought  to  claim  him  as  one  of 
themselves.1  But  it  is  only  so  long  as  we  take  happiness 
to  be  man's  chief  end  or  good,  and  regard  the  universe  as 
'  a  place  of  pleasure ',  that  Kant  adopts  this  tone  or  allows 
it  to  be  justified.  If  the  world  of  time  is  really,  as  he  holds 
it  is,  the  training  ground  of  the  spirit,  if  man's  painful  his- 
tory is  but  the  long  discipline  by  which  a  moral  being  is 
shaped  out  of  a  merely  animal  creature,  then  Kant's  attitude 
is  rather  that  of  Browning  in  '  Rabbi  ben  Ezra  '. 

The  process  can  only  be  rightly  judged  in  the  light  of 
what  we  take  to  be  the  end  in  view.  And  it  is  just  here 
that  Kant  introduces  his  new  formulation  of  the  question, 
not  only,  as  already  indicated,  by  breaking  away  from  the 
hedonistic,  or  at  least  eudaemonistic,  presuppositions  of  his 
century,  but  still  more  by  insisting  that  the  preliminary  to 
all  fruitful  discussion  is  to  make  clear  to  ourselves  what  we 
mean,  or  can  intelligibly  mean,  by  an  ultimate  End.  This 
Kant  fixes  through  the  idea  of  value  or  worth  which  he  puts 
in  the  forefront  of  his  ethics.  This  idea  is  fundamental, 
I  think,  in  all  constructive  thought  since  Kant's  time, 
though  it  may  disguise  itself  in  different  forms.  It  is  cer- 
tainly dominant  in  contemporary  discussion. 

'  Nothing  can  possibly  be  conceived,  in  the  world  or  out 
of  it,  which  can  be  considered  good  without  qualification 
except  a  good  will.  Intelligence,  wit,  judgement,  and  the 
other  talents  of  the  mind,  however  they  may  be  named,  or 
courage,  resolution,  perseverance,  as  qualities  of  tempera- 
ment, are  undoubtedly  good  and  desirable  in  many  respects ; 

1  For  example,  Von  Hartmann  in  his  Kant  der  Voter  des  modernen 
Pessimismus.  Kant's  philosophy  of  history  is  chiefly  contained  in  the 
little  treatise,  Idee  zu  einer  allgemeinen  Geschichte  in  weltburgerlicher 
Absicht,  in  his  review  of  Herder's  Ideen,  and  in  the  tract,  Muth- 
masslicher  Anfang  der  Menschengeschichte. 


28  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

but  these  gifts  of  nature  may  also  become  extremely  bad  and 
mischievous  if  the  will  which  is  to  make  use  of  them,  and 
which  therefore  constitutes  what  is  called  character,  is  not 
good.  It  is  the  same  with  the  gifts  of  fortune.  A  rational 
and  impartial  spectator  can  have  no  pleasure  in  the  sight  of 
the  uninterrupted  prosperity  of  a  being  unadorned  by  a  sin- 
gle feature  of  a  pure  and  good  will.  Hence  a  good  will  ap- 
pears to  constitute  the  indispensable  condition  even  of  being 
worthy  of  happiness.  ...  A  good  will  is  good  not  because 
of  what  it  performs  or  accomplishes,  not  by  its  aptness  for 
the  attainment  of  some  proposed  end,  but  simply  in  virtue 
of  its  volition,  that  is,  it  is  good  in  itself.  .  .  .  Even  if  it 
should  happen  that,  owing  to  special  disfavour  of  fortune 
or  the  niggardly  provision  of  a  step-motherly  nature,  this 
will  should  wholly  lack  power  to  accomplish  its  purpose, 
...  it  would  still  shine  like  a  jewel  by  its  own  light,  as 
something  which  has  its  whole  value  in  itself.' *  In  these 
well-known  words  Kant  formulates  the  idea  of  '  absolute 
value  '  as  revealed  in  the  moral  personality,  and  from  this,  as 
his  irov  GTGO,  he  proceeds  to  build  up  his  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse as  '  a  realm  of  ends  ' — a  moral  system,  that  is  to  say, 
whose  ultimate  purpose  or  raison  d'etre  is  the  realization  of 
this  supreme  good  in  a  community  of  ethical  persons. 

In  the  light  of  this  idea,  which  appears  in  Kant  as  a 
fundamental  certainty,  '  the  frame  of  nature ',  on  which 
Hume's  whole  argument  had  been  based,  assumes  a  quite 
subordinate  significance.  '  Two  things ',  Kant  has  said, 
'  fill  the  mind  with  ever  new  and  increasing  admiration  and 
awe,  the  oftener  and  the  more  steadily  we  reflect  upon  them, 
the  starry  heavens  above  and  the  moral  law  within.'  But 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  subordinate  the  former  to  the  latter, 
and  to  restore  man  as  an  intelligence  to  that  central  posi- 
tion in  the  scheme  of  things,  from  which  Copernicus  had 

1  The  opening  sentences  of  the  first  section  of  the  Grundlegung  zur 
Metaphysik  der  Sitten  (Abbott's  translation,  pp.  9-10). 


ii  A  REALM  OF  ENDS  29 

dethroned  him  as  an  animal  creature.  *  Stars  and  systems 
wheeling  past '  would  be  but  an  unmeaning  show,  if  they 
did  not  furnish  the  casket  for  the  jewel  of  which  he  spoke. 
The  use  of  the  world,  as  Keats  finely  said,  is  to  be  '  the  vale 
of  soul-making '.  '  Do  you  not  see  ',  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters,  '  how  necessary  a  world  of  pains  and  trouble  is  to 
school  an  intelligence  and  make  it  a  soul?  A  place  where 
the  heart  must  feel  and  suffer  in  a  thousand  diverse  ways. 
.  .  .  As  various  as  the  lives  of  men  are,  so  various  become 
their  souls,  and  thus  does  God  make  individual  beings,  sparks 
of  his  own  essence.' a  So  to  Kant  the  world  becomes  ulti- 
mately intelligible  as  a  spiritual  process — what  his  great  con- 
temporary, Lessing,  called  a  divine  education — in  Kant's 
eyes,  too',  an  education  of  the  race,  but  pre-eminently  for  him 
an  education  of  the  individual  for  a  never-ending  life  of 
progress  towards  the  ideal.  Nature,  he  says,  otherwise  re- 
garded as  a  machine,  receives  the  name  of  a  '  realm  ',  a  king- 
dom or  system,  when  viewed  in  relation  to  rational  beings  as 
its  ends.2  It  acquires  in  that  light,  we  may  say,  a  unity  which 
otherwise  does  not  belong  to  it;  it  becomes  an  element  in 
a  self-supporting  system.  Reason  demands  not  merely  the 
*  is  '  of  bare  fact,  but  the  '  ought-to-be  ',  the  *  deserves-to-be  ' 
of  absolute  value.  But,  as  Fichte  was  soon  to  put  it,  in  the 
Kantian  spirit,  *  if  matter  alone  existed,  it  would  be  just 
the  same  as  if  nothing  at  all  existed  '.3  I  have  no  desire 
to  raise  here  the  question  at  issue  between  Berkeleian 
idealism  and  realism,  the  question,  I  mean,  whether  a  self- 
existent  material  universe  is  or  is  not  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  It  is  the  question  of  value  alone  with  which  we  are 
concerned ;  and  I  think  we  may  say  without  hesitation  that, 
apart  from  the  emotions  which  they  may  awaken  in  a  ra- 
tional spectator,  the  kaleidoscopic  transformations  of  ex- 

1  Letters  of  John  Keats,  edited  by  Sidney  Colvin,  p.  256. 

1  Grundlegung  (Abbott),  p.  57;  Werke  (ed.  Hartenstein),  vol.  v,  p.  286. 

*  Cf.  Kant,  Critique  of  Judgment,  section  86. 


30  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

ternal  nature  possess  in  themselves  no  trace  of  that  intrinsic 
value  which  must  belong  to  what  Kant  calls  an  end-in-itself. 
They  are  all  summed  up  in  Spencer's  phrase,  the  redistribu- 
tion of  matter  and  motion ;  and,  apart  from  conscious  results 
which  the  process  may  condition,  it  is  hard  to  see  what 
interest  lies  for  God  or  man  in  the  infinite  shif tings  of  the 
cosmic  dust.  Even  if  we  include  in  our  world  the  existence 
of  sentient  creatures,  and  these  all  happy,  or,  at  least, 
with  a  surplus  of  pleasure  over  pain,  this  '  green-grazing 
happiness  of  the  herd  ',  as  Nietzsche  contemptuously  calls 
it,  would  not  give  us  the  inherent  worth  which  reason 
demands  in  a  self-justifying  end.  The  demand  for  such  an 
end  would  seem  to  be  as  much  a  rational  necessity  as  that 
which  impels  us  to  refund  any  phenomenon  into  its  ante- 
cedent conditions — if  it  does  not,  indeed,  represent  a  deeper 
principle  of  explanation,  a  deeper  need  of  reason.  Cer- 
tainly the  human  mind  is  not  content  to  take  the  universe 
simply  as  a  fact  or  set  of  interrelated  facts.  It  is  not 
intellectual  coherence  alone  that  the  philosopher  seeks — the 
fitting  together,  as  it  were,  of  the  parts  of  some  gigantic 
puzzle.  The  most  perfect  realization  of  unity  in  variety  is 
as  naught,  if  there  is  nowhere  anything  to  which  we  can 
attach  this  predicate  of  value.  If  the  philosophical  impulse 
is  to  be  satisfied,  we  must  be  able  to  repeat  the  verdict  of 
the  divine  Labourer  upon  his  world ;  we  must  be  able  to  say 
that  the  world  is  '  good  '  in  the  sense  of  possessing  intrinsic 
worth  or  value. 

Kant,  the  ethicist  par  excellence  in  modern  philosophy, 
recognizes  this  quality  exclusively  in  character  or  the  moral 
will;  and  therefore  this  becomes  for  him  the  one  end-in- 
itself,  for  whose  realization  the  universe  exists,  and  by  which 
its  existence  is  explained  or  justified.  Even  those  who, 
like  Professor  Bosanquet,  object  most  strongly  to  the  too 
exclusive  moralism  of  his  theory,  admit  that  his  error  is 
excusable,  in  so  far  as  we  get,  in  morality  and  religion,  '  the 


ii  DUTY  AND  FREEDOM  31 

essential  and  fundamental  conditions  '  of  the  perfect  life, 
to  which  all  other  excellences — intellectual  or  artistic, 
for  example — '  are  relatively  posterior  and  dependent '. 
'  Morality ',  says  Professor  Bosanquet,  *  can  more  nearly 
stand  alone,  and  its  absence  shakes  the  whole  foundations 
of  life  and  mind.  Such  absence  is  in  respect  to  life  as  a 
whole,  what  a  failure  of  belief  in  the  first  principles  of  ra- 
tional system  is  to  intelligence.' x  Accepting  this  justifica- 
tion of  Kant's  procedure,  we  may  frankly  accept  also  the 
implied  criticism  of  his  too  exclusive  attitude.  The  hack- 
neyed triad  of  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good  is 
sufficient  to  remind  us  that  there  are  at  least  two  other  phases 
of  experience  to  which  it  would  be  strange  to  deny  an 
intrinsic  value. 

When  Kant  proceeds  to  work  out  the  consequences  of^ 
his  fundamental  conception,  the  result,  as  formulated  in  /  N 
what  he  calls  the  '  Postulates  of  the  Practical  Reason  ',  is 
less  satisfactory  than  might  fairly  have  been  anticipated.  "V 
The  postulates  are  three  in  number.  First  of  all,  the  /\ 
imperative  of  duty  involves,  as  its  self-evident  condition, 
the  Freedom  of  the  being  on  whom  the  command  is  laid. 
'  Thou  canst  because  thou  oughtest.'  Kant  is  speaking  of 
human  nature  in  the  Idea,  and  he  says  that  the  being  who 
can  conceive  the  idea  of  a  law  possesses,  in  virtue  of  that 
very  fact,  the  power  of  realizing  it.  We  accept  such 
responsibility  when  we  condemn  ourselves,  as  we  do,  for 
our  own  failures.  So  understood,  freedom  and  intelligence 
go  together.  Kant  repeatedly  puts  freedom  on  a  different 
footing  from  the  other  two  postulates.  '  It  is  the  only  one 
of  all  the  ideas  of  the  speculative  reason  of  which  we  know 
the  possibility  a  priori,  because  it  is  the  condition  of  the 
moral  law  which  we  know.'  The  possibility  of  the  other  two 
ideas  (those  of  God  and  immortality)  is  proved,  he  says,  '  by 
the  fact  that  freedom  actually  exists,  for  this  idea  is  revealed 
1  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  347-8. 


32  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

by  the  moral  law.' 1  Twice  over  in  the  Critique  of  Judg- 
ment, he  notes,  as  something  '  very  remarkable  ',  that  in  this 
case  (and  in  this  one  case  only)  we  have  an  Idea  of  Pure 
Reason  '  whose  object  is  a  thing  of  fact  and  to  be  reckoned 
among  sdbilia  '.2  Duty  and  freedom,  in  short,  are  for  Kant 
not  so  much  two  facts,  one  of  which  is  inferred  from  the 
other,  as  two  ways  of  characterizing  the  same  experience.3 

It  is  in  his  handling  of  the  other  postulates  that  we  begin 
to  feel  a  certain  meagreness  and  externality  in  the  treatment. 
Kant  starts  from  the  conception  of  the  summum  bonum  as 
the  object  of  the  rational  will,  the  end,  that  is  to  say,  whose 
realization  is  enjoined  by  the  law  of  duty;  and,  in  formulat- 
ing it,  the  preacher  of  duty  for  duty's  sake,  who  had  so 
rigorously  purged  his  ethics  of  all  considerations  of  happi- 
ness or  natural  inclination,  surprises  us  by  the  baldly 
hedonistic  lines  on  which  he  rounds  off  his  theory.  Job 
is  not  to  serve  God  for  naught  after  all.  Virtue,  it  is  said, 
remains  the  supreme  good  (bonum  supremum)  inasmuch  as 
it  is  *  the  supreme  condition  of  all  our  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness ',  and  remains  therefore  the  formal  maxim  of  the  will. 
'  But  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  the  whole  and  perfect 

1  Preface  to  Practical  Reason  (Abbott),  p.  88. 

1  Critique  of  Judgment,  section  91  (Bernard's  translation,  p.  405): 
1  There  is  one  rational  Idea  (which  is  susceptible  in  itself  of  no  presen- 
tation in  intuition  and  consequently  of  no  theoretical  proof  of  its  possi- 
bility) which  also  comes  under  things  of  fact.  This  is  the  idea  of  Free- 
dom, whose  reality,  regarded  as  a  particular  kind  of  causality,  may  be 
exhibited  by  means  of  practical  laws  of  pure  Reason,  and  conformably 
to  this,  in  actual  actions,  consequently  in  experience.  This  is  the  only 
one  of  the  Ideas  of  Pure  Reason  whose  object  is  a  thing  of  fact  and  to 
be  reckoned  among  sdbilia.'  He  notes  this,  both  here  and  again  on 
p.  413,  as  '  sehr  merkwiirdig'.  Compare  also  p.  414:  '  All  belief  must  be 
grounded  upon  facts.  .  .  .  All  facts  belong  either  to  the  natural  concept, 
which  proves  its  reality  in  the  objects  of  sense,  or  to  the  concept  of 
freedom,  which  sufficiently  establishes  its  reality  through  the  causality 
of  reason  in  regard  to  certain  effects  in  the  world  of  sense,  possible 
through  it,  which  it  incontrovertibly  postulates  in  the  moral  law.' 

*  We  find  them  expressly  equated  in  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason: 
'  this  consciousness  of  the  moral  law,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  of  free- 
dom' (Abbott,  p.  135). 


ii  THE  SUMMUM  BONUM  33 

good,  as  the  object  of  the  desires  of  rational  finite  beings; 
for  this  requires  happiness  also,  and  that  not  merely  in  the 
partial  eyes  of  the  person  who  makes  himself  an  end,  but 
even  in  the  judgement  of  an  impartial  reason,  which  regards 
persons  in  general  as  ends  in  themselves.'  Thus  '  virtue 
and  happiness  together  constitute  the  possession  of  the  sum- 
mum  bonum  in  a  person,  and  the  distribution  of  happiness 
in  exact  proportion  to  morality  (which  is  the  worth  of  a 
person  and  his  worthiness  to  be  happy)  constitutes  the 
summum  bonum  of  a  possible  world;  hence  this  summum 
bonum  expresses  the  whole,  the  perfect  good  V  An  unkind 
critic  might  say  that  although  the  primacy  is  accorded  to 
virtue  as  the  supreme  condition,  yet  the  definition  of  virtue 
as  '  worthiness  to  be  happy '  seems,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
put  virtue  in  a  merely  instrumental  relation  towards  happi- 
ness, as  the  real  object  of  desire  and  the  ultimate  end  of 
action.  But  however  that  may  be,  Kant's  second  and  third 
postulates  are  directly  deduced  by  him  from  this  formula 
of  the  summum  bonum.  The  postulate  of  immortality 
connects  itself  with  the  element  of  virtue  or  perfection;  for 
the  primary  object  of  the  moral  individual  must  be  the 
attainment  of  that  conformity  of  his  will  with  the  moral 
law  which  would,  in  the  eyes  of  a  perfect  and  all-seeing 
Judge,  constitute  a  passport  to  happiness.  But  such  '  holi- 
ness '  of  will  is  '  a  perfection  of  which  no  rational  being 
of  the  sensible  world  is  capable  at  any  moment  of  his 
existence  '.2  It  must  be  found,  therefore,  in  an  infinite 
progress  of  approximation,  and  *  such  an  endless  progress 
is  possible  only  on  the  supposition  of  the  endless  duration 
of  the  existence  and  personality  of  the  same  rational  being, 
which  is  what  we  mean  by  the  immortality  of  the  soul '. 
The  existence  of  God  is  connected  with  the  second  element 
in  the  summum  bonum;  for  the  failure  of  the  natural 

1  Abbott,  p.  206. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  218. 


34  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE          LECT. 

system  of  causes  and  effects  to  realize  that  distribution  of 
happiness  in  exact  proportion  to  morality  which  Kant's 
formula  demands,  involves  the  existence  of  God  as  a  moral 
governor  of  the  universe  who  will  ultimately  effect  the 
adjustment  required.  In  short,  '  it  is  morally  necessary 
to  assume  the  existence  of  God.' l 

Kant's  statement  of  the  argument  for  immortality  does 
not  directly  concern  us  at  present.  We  may  confine  our- 
selves, therefore,  to  the  third  postulate,  which  is  our  proper 
subject.  And  here  criticism  naturally  fastens  on  the  ex- 
ternalism  of  the  conception  and  on  the  peculiarly  unfortunate 
nature  of  an  argument  which  introduces  God  simply  as  a 
means  to  the  happiness  of  individual  human  beings.  Surely 
if,  as  Kant  insists,  it  is  wrong  to  treat  a  human  being  merely 
as  a  means,  it  must  be  a  false  way  of  putting  things  to  pre- 
sent God  himself  in  this  merely  instrumental  light — as  a  deus 
ex  machina  introduced  to  effect  the  equation  between  virtue 
and  happiness.  Formulated  thus,  the  argument  is  calculated 
to  provoke  Hume's  reminder  that  to  build  one  hypothesis 
upon  another,  by  way  of  avoiding  the  conclusion  suggested 
by  the  facts  accessible  to  us,  is  '  building  entirely  in  the  air  '. 
And  although  Kant  would  reply  that  his  conclusion  is  based 
upon  a  fact  of  another  order,  namely,  the  fundamental  de- 
liverance of  the  moral  consciousness,  he  gravely  misinter- 
prets that  deliverance  and  its  implications,  in  consequence  of 
the  sheerly  individualistic  and  deistic  habit  of  thought  which 
he  shares  with  Hume  and  the  eighteenth  century  generally. 
It  is  upon  the  attitude  of  the  moral  man  himself  that  the 
moral  philosopher  should  base  his  theory.  But  the  temper  of 
true  virtue  is  not  the  meticulous  claim  which  Kant  formu- 
lates for  doles  of  happiness  in  exact  proportion  to  individual 
merit.  The  temper  of  true  virtue  is  rather  that  of  Spinoza's 
closing  proposition,  Beatitudo  non  est  virtutis  praemium  sed 
ipsa  virtus.  .  It  claims  no  wages  as  the  reward  of  its  well- 
1  Abbott,  p.  222. 


ii  VIRTUE  AND  HAPPINESS  35 

doing,  least  of  all  does  it  keep  a  moral  ledger  with  a  debit 
and  credit  account  to  be  evenly  balanced. 

Glory  of  Virtue,  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong, — 
Nay,  but  she  aimed  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she; 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on,  and  still  to  be. 

The  real  postulate  or  implied  presupposition  of  ethical 
action  is  simply  that  we  are  not  acting  in  a  world  which 
nullifies  our  efforts,  but  that  morality  expresses  a  funda- 
mental aspect  of  reality,  so  that  in  our  doings  and  strivings 
we  may  be  said,  in  a  large  sense,  to  have  the  universe  some- 
how behind  us.  Moral  action,  in  short,  implies  the  belief 
in  a  moral  order,  just  as  deliberate  action  of  any  sort  im- 
plies belief  in  the  orderly  connectedness  of  physical  nature. 
And  of  course  that  was  the  general  idea  which  Kant  intended 
to  express — the  broad  idea  of  the  universe  as  a  divine  moral 
order,  not  as  a  power  hostile  or  indifferent  to  the  life  of  eth- 
ical endeavour.  But  owing  to  the  extraordinary  hold  which 
the  individualism  and  the  external  deism  of  his  century  had 
over  him,  God  seems  to  be  introduced  in  Kant's  moral  theory 
almost  as  an  after-thought,  and  He  is  connected  with  the  law, 
not  as  its  inspirer  or  author,  but  in  the  merely  administrative 
capacity  of  Paymaster.  Kant  tells  us,  it  is  true,  that  after 
we  have  accepted  the  pure  law  of  duty  in  ethical  practice, 
we  may  go  on  to  regard  its  injunctions,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  religion,  as  the  commands  of  a  divine  lawgiver.  But, 
as  he  hastens  to  add,  the  sanction  thus  super-added  to  the 
moral  law  has  nothing  to  do  with  its  inherent  and  self-im- 
posed authority,  for  man  can  be  bound  only  by  his  own  law. 

Here  we  meet  Kant's  great  doctrine  of  the  autonomy  of 
the  moral  will  as  the  foundation  of  an  obligation  that  cannot 
be  evaded.  The  self  is  bound  by  the  law  because  the  law 
is  self-imposed;  it  is  its  own  law,  and  is  recognized  as  such. 
But  Kant  does  not  see  that,  in  this  profound  doctrine,  he 
has  opened  the  way  to  a  truer  conception  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  human  and  the  divine  than  is  represented  by  the 


36  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE          LECT. 

painfully  mechanical  theory  of  a  super-added,  and  strictly 
superfluous,1  theological  sanction.  The  fruitful  idea  of  the 
self  as  at  once  the  author  and  the  subject  of  moral  legislation 
— as  laying  down  a  law  not  only  for  the  single  self  but  for 
all  men  and,  indeed,  as  Kant  says,  for  all  rational  beings — 
naturally  suggests  the  question  whether  such  a  self  can  still 
be  treated  as  an  isolated  individual. 

I  may  illustrate  my  argument  by  a  reference  to  certain 
statements  of  Dr.  Martineau  upon  this  very  point.  Mar- 
tineau,  who  was  steeped,  like  Kant,  in  an  inherited  indi- 
vidualism, denies  this  doctrine  of  the  autonomy  of  the  will 
on  the  express  ground  that  it  violates  the  unitary  and  ex- 
clusive nature  of  personality.  '  It  takes  two  ',  he  says,2  '  to 
establish  an  obligation.  .  .  .  The  person  that  bears  the  obli- 
gation cannot  also  be  the  person  whose  presence  imposes  it : 
it  is  impossible  to  be  at  once  the  upper  and  the  nether  mill- 
stone. Personality  is  unitary,  and  in  occupying  one  side  of 
a  given  relation  is  unable  to  be  also  on  the  other.'  Hence 
he  concludes  that  the  sense  of  authority  means  '  the  recogni- 
tion of  another  than  I,  ...  another  Person,  greater  and 
higher  and  of  deeper  insight.'  This  is  the  God  of  Deism, 
introduced  to  make  good  the  sheer  individualism  of  the  self 
as  a  '  unitary  personality ' ;  and  apart  from  this  presup- 
position the  argument  has  no  force.  That  such  is  the 
presupposition  is  plain  from  the  hypothetical  examples 
by  which  Martineau  seeks  to  justify  his  contention.  He 
supposes  '  the  case  of  one  lone  man  in  an  atheistic  universe  ', 
and  asks  whether  there  could  '  really  exist  any  authority 
of  higher  over  lower  within  the  enclosure  of  his  detached 
personality ' ;  and  he  not  unreasonably  concludes  that  '  an 
insulated  nature  ', '  an  absolutely  solitary  individual ',  cannot 

1  Superfluous,  and  indeed  noxious,  so  far  as  ethics  is  concerned.  The 
reference  to  God  seems  in  Kant  solely  connected  with  '  the  attainment 
of  the  summum  bonum ' — '  the  desired  results ',  '  the  happy  conse- 
quences ',  which  God  guarantees  (see  Abbott,  p.  226). 

*  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  vol.  ii,  pp.  96-9. 


n  AUTONOMY  AND  IMMANENCE  37 

be  conceived  as  the  seat  of  authority  at  all.  But  the  re- 
joinder is  that  such  an  individual  is  a  pure  myth,  the  crea- 
ture of  a  theory,  and  is  certainly  improperly  spoken  of  as  a 
self  or  a  person.  If  any  being  were  shut  up,  in  Martineau's 
phrase,  '  within  the  enclosure  of  his  detached  personality,' 
he  would  be  a  self-contained  universe  in  himself,  or  rather 
he  would  be  one  bare  point  of  mere  existence.  If  intelli- 
gences were  simply  mutually  exclusive  points  of  subjectivity, 
then  indeed  they  could  not  be  the  seats  and  depositaries 
of  an  objective  law;  they  could  not  be  the  subjects  of  law 
at  all.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,1  '  consciousness  of  imper- 
fection, the  capacity  for  progress,  and  the  pursuit  of  per- 
fection, are  alike  possible  to  man  only  through  the  universal 
life  of  thought  and  goodness  in  which  he  shares,  and  which, 
at  once  an  indwelling  presence  and  an  unattainable  ideal, 
draws  him  "  on  and  always  on  ".'  The  authority  claimed  by 
what  is  commonly  called  the  higher  self  is  thus  only  intel- 
ligible, if  the  ideals  of  that  self  are  recognized  as  the  imme- 
diate presence  within  us  of  a  Spirit  leading  us  into  all  truth 
and  goodness.  But  the  immanence  of  the  divine  was  an  idea 
foreign  to  Kant's  whole  way  of  thinking.  Instead,  therefore, 
of  revising  his  conception  of  the  self  in  view  of  its  legislative 
function,  he  simply  tells  us  that,  while  in  ethics  we  must  re- 
gard the  law  as  self-imposed,  we  may  go  on  in  religion  to 
regard  its  precepts  as  the  commands  of  a  Supreme  Being,  the 
reason  assigned  for  so  regarding  them  consisting  in  the  fact 
that  only  through  such  a  Being,  morally  perfect  and  at  the 
same  time  all-powerful,  can  we  hope  to  attain  the  summum 
bonum. 

But  after  we  have  discarded  the  eighteenth-century  frame- 
work of  the  Kantian  scheme,  the  central  and  permanently 
important  position  remains — the  idea  of  intrinsic  value  as 
ultimately  determinative  in  a  philosophical  reference,  as 
yielding  us,  in  the  Kantian  phrase,  an  intelligible  world, 

1  The  Philosophical  Radicals  and  other  Essays,  pp.  97-8. 


38  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

which,  when  recognized,  sets  limits  to  the  exclusive  preten- 
sions of  the  world  of  sense-perception,  and  defines  the  mode 
or  degree  of  reality  which  belongs  to  that  world  in  the  total 
scheme  of  things.  This  conception  of  intrinsic  value  as  the 
clue  to  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality  is  the  fundamental  con- 
tention of  all  idealistic  philosophy  since  Kant's  time.  It  is 
the  living  assumption  at  the  root  of  the  great  speculative 
systems  to  which  the  Kantian  theory  immediately  gave  rise 
in  Germany.  This  is  obvious  in  Fichte's  case,  to  whom  the 
consciousness  of  the  moral  law  is  the  ultimate  evidence  of  his 
own  reality,  and  the  universe  itself  only  the  material  of  duty. 
If  it  lies  less  on  the  surface  in  Hegel,  it  is  merely  because  in 
him  Idealism  is  no  longer  militant  but  triumphant,  and  be- 
cause the  system  as  a  whole  is  the  explication  of  the  supreme 
conviction  on  which  it  is  built.  In  this  respect,  what  the 
great  German  idealists  substantially  did  was  to  enlarge  and 
complete  Kant's  conception  of  intrinsic  value  by  making  it 
include  all  the  higher  reaches  of  human  experience.  The 
moral  experience  is  still  predominant  in  Fichte :  the  aesthetic 
comes  to  its  rights  in  Schelling,  with  perhaps  even  an  over- 
emphasis. In  Hegel  the  claims  of  the  theoretical  and  the 
practical  (Truth,  Beauty,  and  Goodness)  are  more  evenly 
balanced,  while  the  stress  laid  on  religion  as  the  bearer  of 
human  culture,  and  as  presenting,  in  its  own  form,  the  sub- 
stance of  philosophical  truth,  goes  far  to  refute  the  common 
criticism  that  the  intrinsic  values  of  concrete  experience  are 
sacrificed  in  his  system  to  a  logical  abstraction. 

And  if  the  idea  of  value  thus  operates  as  an  assumption  in 
Kant's  immediate  successors,  it  becomes  still  more  markedly 
the  watchword  of  Idealism  in  the  long  duel  with  an  en- 
croaching Naturalism,  which  was  the  engrossing  concern  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  which  has  shaped  for  us  the 
specific  form  in  which  the  theistic  problem,  as  the  ultimate 
question  of  philosophy,  presents  itself  to  the  modern  mind. 
All  through  the  period  mentioned,  the  problem  of  construe- 


ii  EXISTENCE  AND  VALUE  39 

tive  thought  has  been  the  relation  of  our  ideals  or  values  to 
the  ultimate  ground  of  things.  So  Sidgwick,  lecturing  in 
the  nineties  in  his  carefully  balanced  way  on  '  The  Scope 
of  Philosophy ',  defined  its  *  final  and  most  important  task ' 
as  the  problem  of  '  connecting  fact  and  ideal  in  some  rational 
and  satisfactory  manner  V  And  at  the  present  day, 
philosophical  discussion  is  carried  on  more  explicitly  in 
terms  of  value  than  at  any  previous  time.  Take  for  exam- 
ple two  such  representative  thinkers  as  Hoffding  and  Win- 
delband, — than  whom  it  would  be  difficult  to  name  two  con- 
temporary writers  more  balanced  in  judgement  or  more 
catholic  in  their  outlook.  Hoffding's  Philosophy  of  Reli- 
gion lays  down  '  the  conservation  of  value  ',  or  *  the  convic- 
tion that  no  value  perishes  out  of  the  world  ',  as  the  charac- 
teristic axiom  of  religion,  while  the  problem  alike  of  religion 
and  of  philosophy  is  said  to  be  '  the  relation  between  what 
seems  to  us  men  the  highest  value  and  existence  as  a  whole  '.2 
And  Windelband  expresses  the  present  philosophical  situa- 
tion thus  : '  We  do  not  so  much  expect  from  philosophy  what 
it  was  formerly  supposed  to  give,  a  theoretic  scheme  of  the 
world,  a  synthesis  of  the  results  of  the  separate  sciences, 
or,  transcending  them  on  lines  of  its  own,  a  scheme  har- 
moniously complete  in  itself;  what  we  expect  from  philoso- 
phy to-day  is  reflection  on  those  permanent  values  which 
have  their  foundation  in  a  higher  spiritual  reality  above 
the  changing  interests  of  the  times.' 3 

I  have  said  that  the  debate  between  Naturalism  and 
Idealism  dominates  the  whole  of  the  second  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  that  it  has  bequeathed  to 
us  the  peculiarly  modern  form  of  the  theistic  problem. 
We  shall  see  in  the  following  lecture  how  the  formu- 

1  H.  Sidgwick,  Philosophy,  its  Scope  and  Relations,  p.  30. 
"pp.  6,  9-10  (English  translation). 

'  In  his  lectures,  published  in   1909,  Die  Philosophic  im  deutschen 
Geistesleben  des  I9ten  Jahrhunderts,  p.  119. 


40  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

lation  of  the  issue  was  determined — determined,  I  think, 
unfortunately — by  specific  features  of  the  Kantian  philoso- 
phy. In  the  meantime,  if  we  recall  briefly  the  larger  aspects 
of  this  perennial  philosophical  antithesis,  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  idea  of  value  is  central  and  decisive  throughout.  It  is,  at 
bottom,  the  question  of  the  divineness  or  the  undivineness  of 
the  universe.  Is  the  universe  the  expression  of  a  transcend- 
ent Greatness  and  Goodness,  or  is  it,  in  ultimate  analysis,  a 
collection  of  unknowing  material  facts?  In  the  plain  im- 
pressive words  of  Marcus  Aurelius — '  The  world  is  either  a 
welter  of  alternate  combination  and  dispersion  or  a  unity  of 
order  and  providence.  If  the  former,  why  do  I  care  about 
anything  else  than  how  I  shall  at  last  become  earth?  But 
on  the  other  alternative,  I  reverence,  I  stand  steadfast,  I  find 
heart  in  the  power  that  disposes  all.'  From  our  human 
point  of  view,  this  alternative  must  necessarily  take  some 
such  form  as  this :  '  Is  the  spirit  of  the  universe  or  the  ulti- 
mate nature  of  things  akin  to  what  we  recognize  as  greatest 
and  best,  or  are  such  standards  and  distinctions  but  human 
parochialisms,  sheerly  irrelevant  in  a  wider  reference?' 
Somehow  thus  we  must  express  it,  for  we  have  no  other 
criterion  which  we  can  apply  than  the  values  which  we  rec- 
ognize as  intrinsic  and  ultimate.  Hence  the  immediate  form 
of  the  question — the  form  also  which  discloses  the  intensely 
practical  interest  which  inspires  it — is  as  to  the  relation  of 
man  and  his  human  values  or  ideals  to  the  universe  in  which 
he  finds  himself.  Is  our  self-conscious  life  with  its  ideal 
ends  but  the  casual  outcome  of  mechanical  forces,  indifferent 
to  the  results  which  by  their  combinations  they  have  unwit- 
tingly created,  and  by  their  further  changes  will  as  unwit- 
tingly destroy,  or  is  it  the  expression,  in  its  own  measure, 
of  the  Power  that  works  through  all  change  and  makes  it 
evolution?  Is  the  ultimate  essence  and  cause  of  all  things 
'  only  dust  that  rises  up  and  is  lightly  laid  again  ',  or  is  it  the 
Eternal  Love  with  which  Dante  closes  his  vision,  '  the  Love 


ii  THE  GREAT  ALTERNATIVE  41 

that  moves  the  sun  and  the  other  stars  '  ?  On  the  one  hy- 
pothesis, as  Mr.  Balfour  has  put  it  in  a  passage  of  poignant 
beauty,  with  the  final  run-down  of  the  solar  system,  as 
science  predicts  it,  '  man  will  go  down  into  the  pit,  and  all 
his  thoughts  will  perish.  The  uneasy  consciousness  which 
in  this  obscure  corner  has  for  a  brief  space  broken  the  con- 
tented silence  of  the  universe,  will  be  at  rest.  Matter  will 
know  itself  no  longer.  "  Imperishable  monuments  "  and 
"  immortal  deeds  ",  death  itself,  and  love  stronger  than 
death,  will  be  as  if  they  had  not  been.  Nor  will  anything 
that  is  be  better  or  worse  for  all  that  the  labour,  genius, 
devotion,  and  suffering  of  man  have  striven  through  count- 
less ages  to  effect.' 1  Naturalism  seems  to  teach  that  when 
we  resolve  the  universe,  as  it  were,  into  its  real  constituents, 
it  reduces  itself  to  the  ceaseless  redistribution  of  matter  and 
motion,  what  William  James  not  inaptly  describes  as  the 
'  vast  drif tings  of  the  cosmic  weather  '. 

Let  us  grant,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  such  a  theory 
is  intellectually  conceivable ;  it  would  still  remain  incredible, 
because  it  outrages  the  deepest  convictions  on  which  our 
life  is  built.  Our  sense  of  value  is  not  a  matter  of  selfish 
preference  or  individual  desire;  the  judgement  of  value  is 
as  impartial  as  it  is  unhesitating.  It  is  as  objective  in  its 
own  sphere  as  a  scientific  judgement  on  matters  of  fact. 
On  points  of  detail  the  sense  of  value  may  be  open  to  criti- 
cism and  susceptible  of  education,  just  as  scientific  state- 
ments are  open  to  revision.  But  in  its  pronouncements  as  to 
what  possesses  value  and  what  does  not — in  its  recognition 
of  the  main  forms  of  value,  and  in  its  general  scale  of  higher 
and  lower — it  represents  an  unswerving  conviction  which  is, 
even  prima  facie,  at  least  as  important  an  element  in  the 
philosophical  question  as  the  scientific  theories  on  which 
Naturalism  builds;  and  if  the  scope  of  these  theories  be 
shown  in  a  truer  light,  it  may  well  become  of  determining 
1  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  31. 


42  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE          LECT. 

significance  for  our  conception  of  ultimate  reality.  Idealism 
takes  its  stand  on  the  essential  truth  of  our  judgements  of 
value,  and  the  impossibility  of  explaining  the  higher  from 
the  lower.  Beauty  and  goodness  are  not  born  of  the  clash  of 
atoms;  they  are  effluences  of  something  more  perfect  and 
more  divine. 

I  would  venture  to  dwell  for  a  few  moments  on  this  point 
of  the  objectivity  of  our  judgements  of  value.  It  is  all- 
important  in  the  discussion  of  values  and  ideals  to  realize 
that  these  are  in  no  sense  private  ends  which  we  seek  to 
impose  upon  the  universe,  and  that  it  is  not  the  disappoint- 
ment of  our  selfish  hopes  which  is  the  real  explanation  of 
our  revulsion  from  the  naturalistic  creed.  It  is  frequently 
implied  in  naturalistic  polemic  that  the  idealist  view  is  no 
better  than  a  sentimental  clinging  to  the  illusions  of  man's 
youth,  a  weak  refusal  to  look  the  facts  in  the  face  and  accept 
the  world  as  it  is.  But  Lotze,  in  a  famous  passage,  has  ex- 
posed the  falsity  of  this  ostentatious  worship  of  truth,  this 
'  sham  heroism,  which  glories  in  renouncing  what  no  man 
has  a  right  to  renounce  V  When  man  confronts  the  world 
with  his  standards  of  value,  his  attitude  is  not  that  of  a  sup- 
pliant but  of  a  judge.  He  does  not  appear  as  one  who  craves 
a  kindness,  but  as  one  who  claims  a  right ;  or  rather,  as  in- 
vested with  the  authority  of  a  higher  tribunal,  he  pronounces 
sentence  on  the  travesty  of  a  universe  which  materialism 
offers  him.  It  is  all  the  more  important,  therefore,  that  in 
staking  the  idealistic  position  on  the  objective  significance  of 
human  values,  we  should  avoid,  as  far  as  possible,  any  ex- 
pression that  might  seem  to  savour  of  merely  personal  wish. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  title  of  a  recent  article  in  the 
Hibbert  Journal 2 — *  Is  the  Universe  friendly  ?  ' — seems  to 

1  Preface  to  the  Mikrokosmos. 

1  January  1912.  My  reference,  I  wish  to  add,  is  only  to  the  title,  and 
in  no  way  to  the  substance  of  Professor  Ladd's  article,  which  I  had  not 
read  at  the  time.  The  title,  as  stated  in  the  opening  sentences,  is  taken 
from  a  recorded  saying  of  F.  W.  H.  Myers. 


ii  OBJECTIVITY  OF  VALUES  43 

me  to  strike  a  false  note;  it  has  just  that  suggestion  of  the 
whining  and  pitiful  which  I  have  been  deprecating.  The 
question  is  rather  whether  the  nature  of  the  ultimately  real 
is  to  be  found  on  the  lines  of  what  we  recognize  as  greatest 
and  best  in  our  own  experience.  So,  again,  the  argument 
from  human  '  needs  '  (which  in  its  legitimate  form  is  iden- 
tical with  that  which  we  are  considering)  requires  to  be  care- 
fully safeguarded,  if  it  is  not  to  invite  misconception.  Man, 
as  Kant  has  said,  is  an  end-in-himself ;  but  we  must  be  care- 
ful to  avoid  expressions  which  would  imply  that  human 
beings,  as  given  finite  personalities,  constitute  the  final  pur- 
pose or  the  central  fact  of  the  universe,  in  the  sense  that  the 
whole  framework  of  being  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  instru- 
ment of  their  individual  destiny.  We  have  seen  that  Kant 
himself,  in  formulating  his  postulates,  erred  in  this  direction, 
first  in  the  prominence  given  to  happiness,  and  secondly,  in 
the  merely  instrumental  function  assigned  to  God.  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  proceeding  on  somewhat  similar  lines, 
was  betrayed  into  a  grosser  lapse  when  he  allowed  himself 
to  say :  '  A  God  is,  indeed,  to  us  only  of  practical  interest, 
inasmuch  as  he  is  the  condition  of  our  immortality.' l  Prac- 
tical interest  in  a  God- — what  a  phrase  and  what  an  attitude ! 
The  glories  of  the  outer  world,  the  splendours  and  sanctities 
of  the  inner  world,  and  no  interest  in  God  save  as  a  security 
for  our  continued  existence !  I  am  reminded  by  contrast  of 
a  passage  in  a  lecture  by  your  own  Principal,  in  which  he 
deals  with  this  theme  of  personal  immortality  in  relation  to 
Old  Testament  study.  After  arguing  for  the  truth  of  the 
doctrine  as  the  outcome  of  the  highest  religious  experience, 
he  continues :  '  Yet  while  this  is  true,  it  is  well  for  us  all 
sometimes  to  pitch  our  religious  life  in  terms  which  do  not 
include  the  hope  of  a  future.  Most  of  the  crises  of  religious 
experience  may  be  achieved,  as  some  of  the  grandest  Psalms 
fulfil  their  music,  without  the  echo  of  one  of  the  far-off  bells 
1  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  vol.  i,  p.  32. 


44  KANT  AND  INTRINSIC  VALUE  LECT. 

of  heaven.  A  man  may  pass  through  the  evangelical 
experiences  of  conversion,  regeneration  and  redemption, 
without  thinking  any  more  of  the  future  than  the  little  child 
thinks,  but  only  sure  and  glad  that  his  Father  is  with  him. 
The  Old  Testament  is  of  use  in  reminding  us  that  the  hope 
of  immortality  is  one  of  the  secondary  and  inferential 
elements  of  religious  experience.' 1 

I  am  not  arguing  here  against  immortality  any  more  than 
your  Principal  in  the  passage  I  have  quoted;  but  I  think 
that  we  place  an  exaggerated  emphasis  upon  it,  if  we  make 
it  the  centre  and  foundation  of  our  whole  world-theory. 
We  all  remember  how  prominent  is  the  place  held  by  the 
idea  in  the  thought  of  the  two  greatest  Victorian  poets, 
Tennyson  and  Browning,  and  to  what  noble  uses  they  turn 
it.  But  in  Tennyson  at  least,  we  may  perhaps  admit  that 
the  emphasis  tends  to  become  unhealthy.  He  is  recorded 
as  saying  in  conversation  that  if  immortality  '  be  not  true, 
then  no  God  but  a  mocking  fiend  created  us.  ...  I'd  sink 
my  head  to-night  in  a  chloroformed  handkerchief  and  have 
done  with  it  all.' 2  A  number  of  passages,  less  violent  in 
expression  but  substantially  to  the  same  effect,  might  be 
quoted  from  the  poems.3 

Against  such  an  utterance  I  would  venture  to  put,  as 
conveying  a  saner  and  a  larger  view,  a  passage  of  Dr. 

1  George  Adam  Smith,  Modern  Criticism  and  the  Preaching  of  the 
Old  Testament,  p.  176. 

*  Recorded  by  James  Knowles,  Nineteenth  Century,  January  1893.    As 
he  spoke,  Knowles  says,  Tennyson  grew  '  crimson  with  excitement '. 
'  His  belief  in  personal  immortality  was  passionate — I  think  almost  the 
strongest  passion  he  had.' 

*  e.  g.  In  Memoriam,  xxxiv : 

Twere  best  at  once  to  sink  to  peace, 
Like  birds  the  charming  serpent  draws, 
To  drop  head  foremost  in  the  jaws 
Of  vacant  darkness  and  to  cease. 

Compare  the  lines  to  Fitzgerald  (dedicatory  introduction  to  Tiresias), 
and  contrast  with  Tennyson's  utterances  the  well-known  words  of 
Socrates:  'If  the  rulers  of  the  universe  do  not  prefer  the  just  man  to 
the  unjust,  it  is  better  to  die  than  to  live.' 


ii  A  QUESTION  OF  PROPORTION  45 

Hutchison  Stirling's,  quoted  in  his  recently  published  Life. 
Dr.  Stirling  himself,  it  may  be  as  well  to  say,  held  the  con- 
viction of  immortality  with  peculiar  intensity,  yet  he  writes : 
'  We  shall  not  speak  of  love  or  of  one's  daily  meals,  or  of 
science  or  of  Shakespeare;  but  he  who  has  seen  the  sea  and 
the  blue  of  heaven,  and  the  moon  and  the  stars,  who  has 
clomb  a  mountain,  who  has  heard  a  bird  in  the  woods,  who 
has  spoken  and  been  spoken  to,  who  has  seen  a  sock  or  a 
shoe  of  his  own  child,  who  has  known  a  mother — he  will 
bow  the  knee  and  thank  his  God  and  call  it  good,  even 
though  his  lot  in  the  end  be  nothingness.' 1  This  is  to  see 
things  in  a  truer  proportion,  and  philosophy  is  largely  a  ques- 
tion of  proportion.  We  cannot  afford  to  stake  our  whole 
position  on  anything  '  secondary  and  inferential ',  however 
well-assured  we  may  ourselves  be  of  its  truth.  Personal  im- 
mortality, as  the  history  of  the  race  abundantly  shows,  is  not 
an  absolute  necessity,  in  the  sense  that  without  it  the  world 
becomes  a  sheer  irrationality.  There  is  certainly  possible 
a  disinterested  devotion  to  ideals  whose  triumph,  as  we  quite 
simply  say,  we  shall  not  be  there  to  see.  We  feel  that  we 
are  sharers  in  a  wider  life,  and  we  feel  that  it  is  good  to 
have  been  admitted  to  share  it.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  aged 
Simeon :  '  Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace 
.  .  .  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  thy  salvation.'  But  that  our 
ideals  themselves  should  perish,  that  nothing  worth  existing 
should  have  any  pledge  of  continuance  or  growth,  that  the 
world  of  values,  in  short,  should  have  no  relation  to  the 
world  of  facts — that  is  the  one  intolerable  conclusion.  And 
just  because  its  intolerableness  has  nothing  to  do  with  any 
private  hopes  or  fears,  we  feel  that  the  refusal  to  entertain 
it  is  a  judgement  of  objective  validity,  that  it  is,  in  short,  of 
the  same  texture  as  the  inability  to  believe  an  intellectual 
contradiction. 

1  James  Hutchison  Stirling,  His  Life  and  Work,  p.  251. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  DUEL  BETWEEN 
IDEALISM   AND   NATURALISM 

IN  the  two  preceding  lectures  we  have  seen  how  the 
problem  of  theism  presented  itself  to  Hume  and  Kant,  the 
two  thinkers  who  stand  in  the  mid-stream  of  the  modern 
philosophical  movement,  and  whose  influence  may  be 
discerned  in  most  of  its  subsequent  course.  Neither  of 
them  can  be  said  to  have  emancipated  himself  from  the 
external  deism  of  his  age  and  environment;  but  in  other 
respects  the  contrast  between  the  two  is  so  great  that  we 
seem,  in  passing  from  one  to  the  other,  to  be  traversing  a 
different  country  and  breathing  a  different  atmosphere.  The 
starting-point,  method  and  goal  of  the  reasoners  seem  to 
have  little  in  common,  when  we  compare  Hume's  critical 
'  contemplation  of  the  works  of  nature  '  and  its  exiguous 
result  with  the  Kantian  argument  which  rests  the  whole 
case  on  the  intrinsic  worth  of  the  moral  personality.  I 
criticized  a  certain  externality  and  poverty  of  feeling  in 
the  formal  arguments  by  which  Kant  establishes  the  postu- 
lates of  immortality  and  the  existence  of  God.  But  his 
central  idea  of  value,  as  a  determining  factor  in  philosophical 
explanation,  I  took  to  be  not  only  sound  in  itself  but  the 
fundamental  contention  of  all  idealistic  philosophy  since 
his  time. 

In  Kant's  immediate  successors,  I  said,  the  idea  of 
value  operates  as  an  assumption,  and  it  is  entirely 
detached  by  them  from  the  special  associations  of  the 
Kantian  theory  of  knowledge.  The  actual  phrase  first 
occurs  as  a  watchword  in  the  long  duel  between  Naturalism 
and  Idealism  which  followed  the  collapse  of  the  great 


in     THE  HEART  AND  THE  REASON     47 

idealistic  systems  and  dominated  the  whole  of  the  second 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  it  reappears  there  in 
a  more  distinctively  Kantian  form.  The  modern  formula- 
tion of  the  ultimate  issue  as  between  Naturalism  and  Ideal- 
ism has,  indeed,  been  mainly  determined  by  two  features 
of  the  Kantian  philosophy — on  the  one  hand,  by  the  cri- 
terion of  value  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  by  the  abrupt  separation  which  Kant  makes 
between  the  theoretic  and  the  practical  reason — between 
the  objective  certitude,  or  knowledge,  attainable  in  the  scien- 
tific sphere  and  the  subjective  certitude,  or  faith,  on  which 
our  ethical  postulates  rest.  If  the  former  feature 
furnished  Idealism  with  her  positive  credo,  the  latter  was 
largely  responsible,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  for  the  dis- 
advantageous conditions  under  which  she  had  often  to  fight 
her  battles.  For,  as  I  have  already  partly  indicated,  the 
principle  of  value  may  either  be  employed  simply  and 
directly,  as  an  immanent  presupposition  rather  than  as  mat- 
ter of  controversial  assertion — so  we  find  it  on  the  whole  in 
the  greater  thinkers — or  it  may  appear  as  a  protest  of  the 
remaining  part  of  our  nature  against  what  it  takes  to  be  the 
usurpation  of  authority  by  the  pure  intellect.  As  it  was 
phrased  by  Pascal,  '  the  heart  has  its  reasons,  of  which  the 
reason  knows  nothing/  It  is  in  this  latter  form  that  the 
argument  frequently  tends  to  appear  in  the  controversy  with 
Naturalism  during  the  period  to  which  I  have  referred; 
and  perhaps  it  is  hardly  possible  when  engaged  in  such 
a  controversy  to  avoid  statements  which  seem  to 
imply  a  dualism  and  a  conflict  between  two  sides  of  our 
nature.  The  more,  however,  this  dualism  is  emphasized, 
the  more  insecure  the  results  claimed  by  the  sense  of  value 
will  come  to  appear.  The  heart,  as  Tennyson  says,  may 
stand  up  '  like  a  man  in  wrath '  '  against  the  freezing 
reason's  colder  part ' ; *  but  strength  of  assertion  will  not 
1  In  Memoriam,  cxxiv. 


48  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

suffice  to  banish  the  recurring  doubt  that,  however  cold  and 
unacceptable  we  may  find  the  conclusions  of  the  reason, 
they  may  nevertheless  be  true — nay,  must  be  so,  unless 
the  premisses  of  Naturalism  can  be  invalidated.  The  reas- 
sertion  of  human  values  is,  in  point  of  fact,  effective  and 
convincing  only  when  it  is  accompanied  by  the  demonstra- 
tion that  the  conclusions  of  Naturalism  rest  on  a  misin- 
terpretation of  the  nature  of  the  scientific  theories  on  which 
they  are  based.  And  this  may  be  shown,  I  think,  by 
philosophical  criticism  to  be  the  case,  without  abandoning 
the  guidance  of  reason  or  indulging  in  any  campaign  against 
'  intellectualism '. 

We  have  first,  however,  to  see  how  the  philosophical  ques- 
tion actually  shaped  itself  during  the  last  sixty  years;  and 
examination  will  show  that  the  way  was  paved  for  the 
more  subjective,  and  essentially  more  sceptical,  statement 
of  the  principle  of  value,  by  the  specific  form  in  which  Kant 
cast  his  results,  no  less  than  by  the  immense  prestige 
acquired  by  science  during  the  period  in  question.  I  have 
referred  to  the  abrupt  separation  made  by  Kant  between 
the  theoretical  and  the  practical  reason.  That  separation 
or  dualism  may  be  attributable  in  part  to  Kant's  favourite 
method  of  '  isolating  *  his  problems,  and  the  subsequent 
difficulty  of  co-ordinating  the  results  of  his  separate  in- 
quiries. But  in  the  present  case  it  must  be  admitted  that 
Kant  keeps  steadily  in  view  the  complementary  relation  of 
the  first  two  Critiques;  the  statement  of  the  results  of  the 
analysis  of  scientific  knowledge  in  the  Pure  Reason  is  con- 
stantly punctuated  by  forward  references  to  the  conclusions 
worked  out  in  the  Practical  Reason.  The  nature  of  Kant's 
theory  of  knowledge  is  really  explained  by  the  relation  of 
his  undertaking  to  the  scientific  knowledge  of  his  time. 
'  If  you  read  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,'  says  M.  Bergson, 
'  you  see  that  Kant  has  criticized  not  reason  in  general, 
but  a  reason  fashioned  to  the  habits  and  exigencies  of  the 


in  THE  KANTIAN  CATEGORIES  49 

Cartesian  mechanism  or  the  Newtonian  physics.' *  Modern 
philosophy  was  born  along  with  modern  science,  or,  to  be 
more  strictly  correct,  it  followed  close  upon  it,  as  a  reflec- 
tive analysis  and  generalization  of  its  methods  and  results. 
The  extent  to  which  the  physics  of  Galileo  is  transfused 
into  the  systems  of  the  founders  of  modern  philosophy  has 
become  a  historical  commonplace.  It  is  seen  in  Descartes 
and  Spinoza  no  less  than  in  Hobbes  and  Gassendi.  Com- 
pleted by  the  genius  of  Newton,  the  world-scheme  of 
mathematical  physics  has  stood,  almost  down  to  our  own 
day,  as  the  ultimate  ideal  of  knowledge  which,  if  we  could 
realize  it  in  respect  of  the  molecular  constitution  of  bodies, 
would  reveal  to  us,  as  Locke  thought,  their  hidden 
'  essence '. 

The  categories  of  Kant  are,  in  this  respect,  a  philosophical 
generalization  of  the  Newtonian  astronomy;  the  reciprocal 
interaction  of  material  particles  in  space  is  the  kind  of 
experience,  the  logical  conditions  of  whose  possibility  they 
summarize.  '  How  is  mathematics  possible  ?  '  and  '  How  is 
pure  physics  possible  ?  ' — into  these  two  questions  Kant 
translates  his  inquiry  in  the  Prolegomena.  To  this  experi- 
ence the  title  of  knowledge  is  restricted;  within  this  sphere 
alone  is  logical  certainty  attainable.  Kant  acknowledges,  it 
is  true — or  rather,  he  insists — that  the  action  of  the  moral 
will  finds  no  place  in  this  world-scheme;  and  as  it  is  in 
the  self  responsive  to  duty,  capable  of  moral  goodness  or 
badness,  that  he  finds  the  real  man  and  the  only  example 
of  intrinsic  value,  he  brands  the  world  of  knowledge  as 
merely  phenomenal,  when  contrasted  with  the  real  world 
of  moral  persons  and  actions.  But,  in  the  historical 
sequel,  the  honorific  title  of  Knowledge,  as  compared 
with  the  Faith  or  Belief  on  which  he  bases  the  verities 

1  Le  parallelisme  psychophysique  et  la  metaphysique  positive.  The 
passage  is  quoted  by  Mr.  A.  D.  Lindsay  in  the  introduction  to  his 
Philosophy  of  Bergson. 


50  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

of  the  ethical  world,  proved  more  potent  than  the 
disparaging  adjective  phenomenal,  especially  when  the 
real  world  from  which  the  phenomenal  is  distinguished 
was  described  by  so  mystically-sounding  a  term  as 
noumenal. 

A  similar  impression  is  produced  by  Kant's  halting  treat- 
ment of  aesthetic  experience  and  of  the  organism  in  the 
Critique  of  Judgment.  While  recognizing  in  both  cases  a 
range  of  experience  which  his  categories  fail  to  express,  he 
refuses  to  treat  the  aesthetic  and  the  biological  account  of 
the  phenomena  as  more  than  a  subjective  way  of  looking 
at  facts  which,  were  our  analysis  keen  enough,  might  yet 
be  reduced  to  instances  of  mechanical  determination.  In 
this  way,  the  impression  is  fostered  that  scientific  explana- 
tion must  always  be  in  terms  of  mathematical  physics — that 
science  and  mathematical  physics  are  in  fact  interchangeable 
terms,  and  that  any  phenomena  which  refuse  to  be  reduced 
to  mechanical  terms  may  be  treated  as  a  subjective  gloss 
upon  the  text  of  objective  knowledge.  And  the  ethical  doc- 
trine, despite  its  primacy  for  Kant  himself,  and  in  spite 
of  the  part  it  played  in  his  idealistic  successors,  came  in 
like  manner  to  be  regarded  by  many  as  an  after-thought 
on  the  philosopher's  part,  intended  to  atone  for  the 
iconoclasm  of  the  first  Critique,  or,  at  best,  as  an  uncalled- 
for  and  baffling  addition  to  an  otherwise  clear  and  consistent 
doctrine. 

We  may  hold — and  I  do  hold — that  to  read  Kant's 
philosophy  thus  is  wholly  to  misread  its  author's  inten- 
tion, and  to  neglect  the  plain  indications  of  the  solidarity  of 
the  three  Critiques  as  integral  parts  of  a  coherent  scheme. 
Nevertheless,  the  broad  fact  remains,  if  we  leave  out  of 
account  in  the  meantime  the  great  idealistic  movement 
which  was  the  immediate  sequel  of  the  Kantian  philosophy 
in  Germany,  that,  for  the  average  nineteenth-century 
thinker,  it  was  the  negative  side  of  Kant's  teaching — the 


in  AGNOSTIC  INTERPRETATIONS  51 

critical  limitation  of  knowledge  to  the  world  of  sense-per- 
ception— that  was  of  real  significance;  and  the  Kantian 
phenomenalism  came  to  be  identified  with  a  somewhat 
facile  agnosticism  or  relativism.  Kant  himself  had  treated 
physical  science  as  the  type  and  norm  of  true  knowledge, 
and  accordingly  the  prestige  of  purely  physical  explanations 
within  the  world  of  experience  was  hardly  lessened  by  the 
formal  acknowledgement  at  the  end  that  the  world  we  know 
is  only  the  appearance  to  us  of  an  unknown  and  unknow- 
able reality.  Such  is  the  type  of  thought  which  meets  us 
in  Spencer  and  Huxley.  Spencer  did  adopt  a  percentage 
of  Kantian  doctrine,  as  distilled  by  Sir  William  Hamilton; 
Huxley  appeals  as  readily  to  Berkeley  and  Hume  and 
physiological  psychology  as  to  Kant.  Both  thinkers  are 
able,  when  challenged,  to  repudiate  the  charge  of  material- 
ism, and  they  do  so  quite  honestly.  Nevertheless,  their 
effective  thinking  is  done  entirely  in  physical  terms,  and 
the  result  is  a  sheer  materialistic  mechanism  with  conscious- 
ness as  an  epiphenomenon — an  inactive  and  strangely 
superfluous  accompaniment  of  the  machinery.  It  is 
sufficient  to  refer  to  Spencer's  reduction  of  the  universe 
to  a  problem  in  the  re-distribution  of  matter  and  motion, 
and  to  Huxley's  theory  of  conscious  automata,  as  an 
indication  of  the  kind  of  doctrine  which  was  thought 
in  the  seventies  of  last  century  to  be  imposed  upon  us 
alike  by  the  criticism  of  knowledge  and  by  the  results  of 
science. 

In  much  closer  relation  to  Kant,  and  more  typical  in  its 
attitude,  was  Lange's  widely  influential  History  of  Material- 
ism, the  first  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1865.  Lange's 
work  was  an  important  factor  in  promoting  the  *  return 
to  Kant '  which  was  so  prominent  a  feature  of  the  later 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century.  His  own  neo-Kan- 
tianism,  which  is  intended  to  be  a  translation  of  Kant  into 
the  terms  of  modern  scientific  thought,  is  no  doubt  more 


52  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

correctly  described  by  the  late  Professor  Adamson  as  a 
reproduction  of  Hume  in  terms  of  physiological  psychology; 
for  Lange  has  left  out  of  his  statement  all  the  profounder 
elements  in  the  Kantian  philosophy.  But  the  historically 
important  fact  was  the  contemporary  acceptance  of  this 
somewhat  shallow  relativism  as  the  permanent  outcome  of 
Kant's  teaching.  For  Lange's  History,  well-written  and 
with  a  fine  ethical  undertone,  was  widely  read,  and  formed 
the  historical  and  philosophical  staple  of  contemporary  men 
of  science  when  they  entered  the  speculative  field.  Now 
Lange  explicitly  identifies  reality  (Wirklichkeit)  with  the 
mechanistic  scheme  as  materialism  presents  it.  But  '  one 
thing  is  certain ',  he  adds,  '  namely,  that  man  requires  a 
completion  of  reality  by  an  ideal  world  which  he  creates 
for  himself,  and  in  the  creation  of  which  the  highest  and 
noblest  of  his  spiritual  functions  co-operate.'  And  he 
points  to  Schiller's  philosophical  poems  as  the  best  example 
of  such  imaginative  creation,  in  which  the  spirit  takes  its 
flight  '  in  das  Gedankenland  der  Schonheit ',  and  finds  there 
not  only  aesthetic  satisfaction,  but  also  ethical  harmony 
and  religious  peace.  The  future  of  religion  and  of  specu- 
lative metaphysics  lies,  according  to  him,  in  this  free  poetic 
creation  of  a  spiritual  home  (Heimath  der  Geister}  in  which 
our  highest  ideals  are  realized.  And  inasmuch  as,  in  the 
spirit  of  Kant,  we  recognize  the  '  real '  world  of.  science  to 
be  itself  but  a  phenomenon,  a  product  of  our  intellectual 
organization,  Lange  holds,  as  against  dogmatic  materialism, 
that  we  have  a  certain  right  to  solace  ourselves  with  such 
speculative  creations.  Experience,  he  says,  is  the  product 
not  of  our  organization  alone,  but  of  that  organization  in 
commerce  with  '  unknown  factors  ' — with  a  foreign  power 
which  partly  lays  compulsion  upon  us,  partly  allows  itself 
to  be  moulded  to  our  ends.  All  the  '  knowledge '  of  this 
power  that  we  can  attain  to  is  the  categorized  world  of  sense- 
perception,  but  it  may  be  that  the  ideals  of  art  and  religion 


in      LANGE'S  REFUGE  IN  POETRY      53 

point  us  to  its  more  intimate  nature.  At  all  events,  they  are 
the  sources  of  all  that  man  has  ever  reverenced  as  divine; 
and  it  is  as  '  free  poesy  ',  and  not  as  theoretic  truth,  that  this 
'  world  of  values  '  succeeds  in  lifting  our  spirits  above  the 
lets  and  hindrances  of  time.  Vaihinger,  writing  some  ten 
years  later  as  a  sympathetic  expositor  and  disciple,  was  more 
emphatic  than  Lange  himself  in  bidding  us  remember  that 
the  world  of  the  speculative  imagination  is  no  more  than  '  a 
subjective  ideal,  with  no  claim  to  represent  reality  V 

So  interpreted,  it  is  obvious  that  the  '  flight  to  the 
ideal '  becomes  no  better  than  an  elaborate  process  of 
self-deception — a  painful  effort  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the 
features  of  what  we  know  in  our  heart  to  be  the  real 
nature  of  existence.  And  if  that  is  so,  it  is  equally  obvious 
that  the  impulse  to  shape  a  fairer  and  a  nobler  world  must 
speedily  wither  at  the  root.  The  function  can  only  be 
sustained  by  some  degree  of  faith  in  the  reality  of  the 
vision.  As  Martineau  eloquently  puts  it  at  the  outset  of 
his  Study  of  Religion :  '  Amid  all  the  sickly  talk  about 
"  ideals  "  which  has  become  the  commonplace  of  our  age, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that,  so  long  as  they  are  a  mere  self- 
painting  of  the  yearning  spirit,  they  have  no  more  solidity 
or  steadiness  than  floating  air-bubbles,  gay  in  the  sunshine 
and  broken  by  the  passing  wind.  .  .  .  The  very  gate  of 
entrance  to  [religion]  is  the  discovery  that  your  gleaming 
ideal  is  the  everlasting  Real,  no  transient  brush  of  a  fancied 
angel's  wing,  but  the  abiding  presence  and  persuasion  of 
the  Soul  of  souls :  short  of  this  there  is  no  object  given 
you.' 2  The  wavering  position  of  Lange  and  the  more 
definitely  negative  position  of  Vaihinger  prove  sufficiently 
that,  in  spite  of  their  would-be  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge, 
the  mechanical  system  in  space  and  time  remains  the  bed- 
rock of  their  world-theory. 

1  Hartmann,  Duhring  und  Lange,  p.  18. 
1  Study  of  Religion,  vol.  i,  p.  13. 


54  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

A  decade  earlier  than  Lange's  History,  the  crass  and 
blatant  materialism  which  spread  over  Germany  after  the 
collapse  of  Hegelian  idealism  had  drawn  from  Lotze,  in 
the  preface  to  the  Mikrokosmos  (1856),  his  memorable 
protest  against  the  '  presumptuous  boldness  '  with  which,  in 
the  name  of  science  and  a  supposed  service  of  truth  for 
truth's  sake,  many  gloried  in  renouncing  and  trampling  on 
all  that  has  been  held  most  sacred  by  the  soul  of  man. 
As  he  pointed  out,  his  own  early  work  in  philosophy  had 
been  in  support  of  an  extension  to  organic  life  of  a  purely 
mechanical  method  of  explanation  in  contrast  to  the  old 
vitalistic  theory.  He  was  thus  in  no  way  inclined  by  his 
antecedents  to  contest  the  claims  of  mechanism  to  be  the 
universal  and  only  legitimate  mode  of  scientific  explanation. 
But  (as  he  summarized  his  own  position),  while  recognizing 
how  absolutely  universal  is  the  extent,  he  recognized  also 
how  completely  subordinate  is  the  significance,  of  the  func- 
tion which  mec*hanism  has  to  fulfil  in  the  structure  of  the 
world.  He  emphasizes  this  conviction  in  the"  distinction  he 
draws,  on  Kantian  lines,  between  the  world  of  forms  and 
the  world  of  values.  The  former,  the  world  regarded  as 
a  mere  succession  of  facts,  of  changing  shapes,  cannot  be 
conceived  as  self-subsistent.  The  function  of  mechanism 
is,  in  short,  essentially  instrumental;  as  Leibnitz  said, 
Causae  cfficientes  pendent  a  finalibus.  '  The  scientific  under- 
standing has  to  be  supplemented  by  the  reason  appreciative 
of  value.' *  For  truth  itself,  he  says  again,  we  demand 
a  value,  and  this  value,  this  justification,  it  can  attain  only 
as  an  element  in  the  total  life  of  an  intelligent  being.  If 
truth  were  merely  the  reflection  in  consciousness  of  an 
already  existent  world,  this  '  barren  rehearsal '  would  have 
no  self-sustaining  value  or  significance,  such  as  those  who 
deify  truth  for  truth's  sake  seem  to  suppose.  Truth,  there- 

1  Mikrokosmos,  Book  II,  chap.  v. 


Ill  LOTZE'b  M1KKUKUSMUS  55 

fore,  as  Plato  said,  is  subordinate  to  the  general  conception 
of  the  Good,  and  the  world  of  forms  must  receive  its  final 
explanation  from  the  world  of  values  whose  medium  it  is. 
This  Lotze  offers  as  his  immovable  conviction  rather  than 
as  the  result  of  a  philosophical  demonstration.  He  empha- 
sizes indeed  the  impossibility  of  any  such  deductive  cer- 
tainty as  Hegelian  idealism  seemed  to  claim  to  possess. 
Speaking  of  the  alternatives  of  Naturalism  and  Idealism, 
he  says,  '  I  cannot  for  a  moment  doubt  that  the  latter 
alternative  is  alone  permissible;  the  whole  sum  of  Nature 
can  be  nothing  else  than  the  condition  for  the  realization  of 
the  Good.  .  .  .  But  this  decided  conviction  indicates  only 
an  ultimate  and  farthest  goal  that  may  give  our  thoughts 
their  direction :  it  does  not  indicate  knowledge  that  deserves 
the  name  of  science,  in  the  sense,  namely,  that  it  can  be 
formulated  in  a  demonstrable  doctrine.  To  our  human 
reason  a  chasm  that  cannot  be  filled,  or  at  least  that  has 
never  yet  been  filled,  divides  the  world  of  values  from  the 
world  of  forms.  .  .  .  With  the  firmest  conviction  of  the 
undivided  unity  of  the  two  we  combine  the  most  distinctly 
conscious  belief  in  the  impossibility  of  this  unity  being 
known.'  1 

Lotze's  statement  remains  typically  Kantian  in  the 
*  chasm  '  it  makes  between  the  world  of  forms,  as  the  sole 
object  of  knowledge,  and  the  world  of  values,  as  resting  on 
merely  subjective  conviction.  The  world  of  knowledge  is 
also  apparently  identified  by  him,  as  by  Kant,  with  the 
mechanistically  conceived  world  of  physical  science.  In 
some  ways,  indeed,  Lotze's  statement  of  the  position  im- 
presses a  reader  as  even  more  subjective  and  apologetic  than 
Kant's — perhaps  owing  to  the  critical  and  balancing  char- 
acter of  his  mind  and  the  reaction  which  can  constantly 
be  detected  in  him  against  what  he  deemed  the  over- 

1  Mikrokosmos,  Conclusion  of  Book  III. 


56  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

statements  of  speculative  idealism.  In  spite  of  the  firm 
assertion  of  the  principle  of  value,  there  is  wanting  some- 
how the  magisterial  tone  which  seems  to  invest  Kant's 
ethical  pronouncements  with  an  objectivity  of  their  own. 
But  Lotze's  statement  of  the  philosophical  problem,  as 
a  conflict  between  supposed  or  apparent  results  of  science 
and  the  cherished  objects  of  religious  faith,  truthfully  re- 
flects the  attitude  of  thoughtful  men  during  the  latter  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  This  conflict  provides  philosophy 
during  the  period  with  its  subject-matter,  and  in  Lotze's 
view  the  problem  does  not  admit  of  an  intellectually  coercive 
solution.  The  contribution  of  philosophy  to  an  intellectual 
harmony,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say,  to 
a  modus  vivendi,  is  to  point  out  the  limitations  of  the  merely 
scientific  point  of  view — the  '  disinterested  understanding  ' 
as  he  calls  it  in  one  place — and  to  vindicate  '  the  belief  that, 
in  its  feeling  for  the  value  of  things  and  their  relations,  our 
reason  possesses  as  genuine  a  revelation. as,  in  the  principles 
of  logical  investigation,  it  has  an  indispensable  instrument 
of  experience  '-1 

Largely  through  Lotze's  influence  on  Albrecht  Ritschl, 
his  colleague  at  Gottingen,  the  idea  of  value  passed  into 
theological  thought.  Formulating  in  the  sharpest  way  the 
opposition  between  theoretic  and  religious  knowledge, 
Ritschl  sought  to  base  theology  exclusively  on  '  judgements 
of  value ',  and  thus  place  its  doctrines  on  a  foundation 
independent  of  controversies  as  to  scientific  matter  of 
fact.  There  is  much  that  is  profoundly  true  in  Ritschl's 
attempt  to  purge  traditional  doctrines  of  what  he  calls 
their  '  metaphysical '  accretions,  and  to  restore  to  them  (or 
to  give  to  them)  a  purely  religious  significance;  and  it 
is  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  Ritschlianism,  de- 
veloped as  it  has  been  by  a  singularly  able  band  of  pupils 
and  followers,  has  been  perhaps  the  most  important  theo- 
1  Book  II,  chap,  v  (English  translation,  vol.  i,  p.  245). 


in  RITSCHL  AND  THEOLOGY  57 

logical  movement  of  the  last  forty  years.  But  it  is  impossible 
to  maintain,  in  the  rigidity  of  its  original  formulation,  the 
opposition  between  judgements  of  value  and  judgements  of 
fact.  Unless  the  objects  of  religious  faith  are  real,  theology 
is  entirely  in  the  air;  and  if  they  are  real  it  is  impossible 
to  treat  the  world  of  religious  belief  and  the  world  of  fact, 
as  science  and  philosophy  handle  it,  as  if  they  were  two 
non-communicating  spheres.  Reality  is  one,  and,  after 
all,  the  human  mind  is  also  one,  and  not  a  bundle  of  un- 
connected and  conflicting  faculties.  Our  various  modes  of 
apprehending  reality  must  have  a  relation  to  one  another 
through  their  common  basis  both  in  the  subject  and  in  the 
object.  Philosophy  is  just  the  attempt  of  the  reason  to 
realize  the  co-ordination  of  the  different  aspects  of  experi- 
ence, and  thereby  to  express,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  nature 
of  the  total  fact.  But  Ritschl's  procedure  amounts  in  effect 
to  an  invitation  to  do  without  philosophy  altogether — to 
leave  the  apparent  conclusions  of  science  and  the  ethico- 
religious  interpretation  of  the  world  standing  side  by  side, 
with  no  criticism  of  either  and  no  attempt  at  mediation  or 
co-ordination.  Such  a  dualism  is  essentially  a  surrender  to 
scepticism,  and  is  therefore  a  seed  of  weakness  in  the 
Ritschlian  theology.  Man  cannot  find  rest  by  balancing  him- 
self in  this  fashion  first  upon  one  leg  and  then  upon  another. 
But  the  dualistic  position  is  entirely  in  keeping  with  the  spirit 
of  the  period  in  which  it  took  its  rise.  It  was  ebb-tide  in 
philosophy,  regarded  as  a  synthetic  doctrine.  There  was 
a  widespread  distrust  of  philosophical  constructions,  engen- 
dered by  the  excesses  of  speculative  idealism,  more  particu- 
larly in  the  field  of  the  '  Philosophy  of  Nature  '.  At  the 
same  time,  the  concentration  of  the  best  energies  of  the 
time  on  the  special  work  of  science  and  on  historical  re- 
search encouraged  a  '  positive  '  or  anti-metaphysical  habit 
of  mind ;  and  popular  philosophy  of  the  negative  variety  was 
already  exploiting  in  a  materialistic  interest  the  conclusions 


58  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

to  which  the  scientific  data  seemed  to  point.  The  salvage 
of  religious  belief  from  this  encroaching  tide  is  the  interest 
both  of  Lotze  and  of  Ritschl.  But  immensely  subtle  and 
suggestive  as  is  their  work,  both  are  fatally  hampered  by 
the  subjectivity  of  their  theory  of  knowledge,  which  they 
accepted  from  Kant  with  adaptations  of  their  own,  and 
which  results  in  the  unsatisfactory  blend  of  Idealism  and 
Agnosticism  that  has  just  been  considered. 

Popularly,  though  inaccurately,  described  as  '  the  con- 
flict between  science  and  religion  ',  the  opposition  of  which 
Lotze  speaks  figured  largely  in  the  theological  and  anti- 
theological  literature  of  the  century,  and  drew  from  Herbert 
Spencer  a  few  years  later  (1862)  the  opening  chapters  of 
the  First  Principles  in  which,  with  the  best  of  intentions 
but  with  a  certain  fatuity,  he  presented  his  doctrine  of  the 
Unknowable  as  offering  '  the  terms  of  a  real  and  permanent 
peace  '  between  the  combatants.  '  If  Religion  and  Science 
are  to  be  reconciled,  the  reconciliation  must  be  this  deepest, 
widest  and  most  certain  of  all  facts — that  the  Power  which 
the  Universe  manifests  to  us  is  utterly  inscrutable.' '  '  A 
permanent  peace  will  be  reached  when  Science  becomes 
fully  convinced  that  its  explanations  are  proximate  and  rela- 
tive, while  Religion  becomes  fully  convinced  that  the  mys- 
tery it  contemplates  is  ultimate  and  absolute.' 2  As  Mr. 
Balfour  wittily  puts  it:  '  His  method  is  a  simple  one.  .  .  . 
He  divides  the  verities  which  have  to  be  believed  into  those 
which  relate  to  the  Knowable  and  those  which  relate  to 
the  Unknowable.  What  is  knowable  he  appropriates, 
without  exception,  for  science,  what  is  unknowable  he 
abandons,  without  reserve,  to  religion.  .  .  .  The  one  pos- 
sesses all  that  can  be  known,  the  other  all  that  seems  worth 
knowing.  With  so  equal  a  partition  of  the  spoils  both 
combatants  should  be  content.' :!  Spencer's  doctrine  pf  the 

1  First  Principles,  chap,  ii,  p.  46.  l  Ibid.,  chap,  v,  p.  107. 

1  Foundations  of  Belief,  ist  ed.,  p.  285. 


in  SPENCER'S  UNKNOWABLE  59 

relativity  of  knowledge  and  the  unknowableness  of  reality 
was,  of  course,  a  direct  descendant  of  the  Kantian  opposi- 
tion between  the  phenomenon  and  the  thing-in-itself;  and 
the  reconciliation  bears  a  certain  resemblance  to  the  corre- 
sponding contrast  in  Kant  between  knowledge  and  belief. 
But  in  Spencer's  case  the  object  of  belief  is  something  to 
which  we  are  to  *  refrain  from  assigning  any  attributes  what- 
ever V  We  shall  not  be  able  to  avoid  '  representing  it  to 
ourselves  in  some  form  of  thought ' ;  and  '  we  shall  not  err 
in  doing  this  ',  he  quaintly  says,  '  so  long  as  we  treat  every 
notion  we  thus  frame  as  merely  a  symbol,  utterly  without 
resemblance  to  that  for  which  it  stands.'  The  words  which 
I  have  italicized  were  withdrawn,  it  is  fair  to  say,  in  1900, 
their  author  having  apparently  by  that  time  come  to  realize 
the  reductio  ad  absurdum  which  they  involve. 

Mr.  Bal four's  own  philosophical  work  is  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  products  of  the  conflict  we  have  been  con- 
sidering. It  offers  as  clear  an  example  as  could  be  desired 
of  the  tendency  to  seek  an  escape  from  the  conclusions  of 
Naturalism,  either  in  a  purely  sceptical  position  or,  at  all 
events,  by  a  line  of  argument  which  limits  and  disparages 
the  function  of  reason  in  experience.  In  the  Defence  of 
Philosophic  Doubt,  published  in  1879  a*  tne  verv  flood-tide 
of  naturalistic  confidence,  Mr.  Balfour  turned  his  sceptical 
batteries  upon  the  reputed  foundation  of  the  naturalistic 
creed  in  the  certainties  of  sense-perception.  His  conclusion 
is,  that  the  ordinary  scientific  beliefs  about  the  material 
world,  which  we  all  share,  are  not  based  upon  reason  but 
thrust  on  us  by  the  practical  needs  of  life.  No  doubt  the 
concatenation  of  the  parts  is  brought  about  by  the  exercise 
of  reason,  but '  the  system  as  a  whole  is  incapable  of  rational 
defence  '.2  It  cannot,  therefore,  set  itself  up  as  a  standard 
to  which  religious  beliefs  must  conform.  '  Religion  is  at 

1  First  Principles,  chap,  v,  p.  109. 

*  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  p.  315. 


6o  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

any  rate  no  worse  off  than  science  in  the  matter  of  proof/ 
and  therefore  we  have  as  much  right  to  believe  the  one  as 
the  other,  if  so  inclined.  The  state  of  matters  may,  in  fact, 
be  described  in  his  own  words  thus :  '  I  and  an  indefinite 
number  of  other  persons,  if  we  contemplate  religion  and 
science  as  unproved  systems  of  belief  standing  side  by  side, 
feel  a  practical  need  for  both.  .  .  .  But  as  no  legitimate 
argument  can  be  founded  on  the  mere  existence  of  this 
need  or  impulse,  so  no  legitimate  argument  can  be  founded 
on  any  differences  which  psychological  analysis  may  detect 
between  different  cases  of  its  manifestation.  We  are  in 
this  matter,  unfortunately,  altogether  outside  the  sphere  of 
Reason.' l  In  such  a  passage,  and  in  others  like  it,  we  have 
obviously  a  formulation  of  the  purest  scepticism,  for 
a  parallel  to  which  we  have  to  go  back  to  Hume — the 
Hume  of  the  Treatise.  Hume  also,  like  Mr.  Balfour,  seeks 
to  reduce  belief  to  '  a  kind  of  inward  inclination  or  im- 
pulse ' — '  a  strong  propensity  '  is  his  favourite  phrase — and 
he  consistently  substitutes  for  logical  grounds  of  belief  the 
psychological  causes  which  bring  it  about.  A  more  dan- 
gerous defence  of  religious  beliefs  it  would  be  difficult,  I 
think,  to  imagine ;  it  surrenders  all  claim  to  rational  criticism 
of  the  dogmas  offered  for  acceptance,  and  supplies,  accord- 
ingly, no  safeguard  against  the  re-invasion  of  the  grossest 
superstition. 

There  is  much  more  that  is  constructive  in  the  later 
volume  on  The  Foundations  of  Belief.  It  contains,  for 
example,  the  significant  argument  for  Theism  '  from  the 

1  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  pp.  319-20  (italics  mine).  Cf.  pp. 
316-17:  'What  constitute  the  "claims  on  our  belief"  which  I  assert  to 
be  possessed  alike  by  Science  and  Theology?  .  .  .  Whatever  they  may 
be,  they  are  not  rational  grounds  of  conviction.  ...  It  would  be  more 
proper  to  describe  them  as  a  kind  of  inward  inclination  or  impulse, 
falling  far  short  of — I  should  perhaps  rather  say,  altogether  differing  in 
kind  from — philosophic  certitude,  leaving  the  reason  therefore  unsatis- 
fied, but  amounting  nevertheless  to  a  practical  cause  of  belief,  from  the 
effects  of  which  we  do  not  even  desire  to  be  released.' 


in  MR.  BALFOUR'S  ARGUMENT  61 

mere  fact  that  we  know,  a  fact  which  like  every  other  has 
to  be  accounted  for '.  If  the  general  system  of  scientific 
beliefs  is  to  be  accepted  as  rational — which  is  the  conten- 
tion of  Naturalism  and  also  the  assumption  of  common- 
sense — it  must  be  because  '  we  bring  to  the  study  of  the 
world  the  presupposition  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  rational 
Being,  who  made  it  intelligible,  and  at  the  same  time  made 
us,  in  however  feeble  a  fashion,  able  to  understand  it.' l 
I  have  pointed  out  elsewhere  2  the  affinities  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
procedure  here  with  Kant's  central  argument  in  the  first 
Critique  from  the  possibility  of  experience,  especially  when 
that  argument  is  amplified  by  Kant  at  the  close,  by 
reference  to  the  regulative  function  of  the  Ideas  of  Pure 
Reason,  so  that,  even  in  the  theoretical  sphere,  as  he  points 
out,  reason  teaches  us  to  regard  reality  as  intelligible  in 
all  its  parts,  and  therefore  as  if  it  were  the  product  of 
a  supreme  Reason.  And,  like  Kant,  having  postulated  '  a 
rational  God  in  the  interests  of  science  ',  Mr.  Balfour  goes 
on  to  postulate  '  a  moral  God  in  the  interests  of  morality  '.3 
The  argument  from  '  needs  '  to  their  satisfaction — presented 
in  the  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt  so  sceptically  that  we 
find  the  terms  '  need '  and  '  impulse '  used  at  times  as 
equivalent 4 — is  here  deepened  so  as  to  be  substantially 
identical  with  the  principle  of  value.  The  author  recognizes 
also  the  caution  with  which  the  argument  requires  to  be 
applied.  '  Whether  this  correspondence  be  best  described 
as  that  which  obtains  between  a  "  need  "  and  its  "  satis- 
faction ",'  he  says,  '  may  be  open  to  question.  But,  at  all 
events,  let  it  be  understood  that  if  the  relation  described  is, 
on  the  one  side,  something  different  from  that  between  a 
premiss  and  its  conclusion,  so,  on  the  other,  it  is  intended 

1  Foundations  of  Belief,  pp.  296,  301. 

2  Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos,  2nd  ed.,  pp.  159-213,  '  Mr.  Balfour  and 
his  Critics.' 

*  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  323. 

4  e.  g.  in  the  passage  already  quoted  on  p.  60. 


62  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

to  be  equally  remote  from  that  between  a  desire  and  its 
fulfilment.  .  .  .  For  the  correspondence  postulated  is  not 
between  the  fleeting  fancies  of  the  individual  and  the 
immutable  verities  of  an  unseen  world,  but  between  these 
characteristics  of  our  nature  which  we  recognize  as  that  in 
us  which,  though  not  necessarily  the  strongest,  is  the 
highest;  which,  though  not  always  the  most  universal,  is 
nevertheless  the  best.' * 

It  is  a  pity  that  so  much  that  is  sound  and  valuable 
should  be  associated  with  an  elaborate  argument  in  dis- 
paragement of  reason  and  an  exaltation  of  authority  which 
seems  to  introduce  again  that  unhappy  disruption  of  our 
nature  which  is  philosophically  so  dangerous  an  expedient. 
It  turns  out  on  a  closer  scrutiny  that  Mr.  Balfour  uses 
'  reason  '  in  the  old  English  sense  of  reasoning,  or  the  proc- 
ess of  conscious  logical  ratiocination ;  and  it  does  not  require 
any  argument  to  convince  us  that  the  vast  majority  of 
human  beliefs — including  certainly  our  ethical,  social,  and 
religious  beliefs — have  not  been  reached  by  such  a  process. 
They  have  been  generated  in  the  individual,  as  Mr.  Balfour 
says,  by  '  custom,  education,  public  opinion,  the  contagious 
convictions  of  countrymen,  family,  party,  or  Church  '.  But 
it  is  to  court  misapprehension  when  he  proceeds  to  sum  up 
these  various  forces  under  the  term  Authority,  and  to  ex- 
press his  meaning  (which  every  one  surely  would  accept)  in 
the  form  of  an  elaborate  contrast  between  Authority  and 
Reason  as  operative  forces  in  human  belief  and  action.  This 
use  of  the  term  authority  is,  if  I  may  say  so,  itself  without 
authority  in  current  English  usage,  and  if  we  do  take  it  in 
Mr.  Bal  four's  sense  to  cover  causes  such  as  those  enumerated 
above — custom,  education,  public  opinion,  and  so  forth — the 
radical  opposition  between  authority  and  reason  at  once  dis- 
appears. The  contrast  is  really  between  the  private,  con- 
sciously acting  reason  of  the  individual  and  the  historic  rea- 
1  Foundations,  pp.  247-8. 


in          APPEAL  TO  THE  NON-RATIONAL  63 

son  in  which  is  summed  up  the  experience  of  the  race.  The 
advance  of  speculative  thought  since  Kant  has  largely  con- 
sisted in  surmounting  the  abstract  and  unhistoric  individual- 
ism of  preceding  philosophy,  which  we  find  also  in  Kant 
himself,  and  bringing  home  to  us  the  larger  or  corporate  rea- 
son, active  in  history  and  embodied  in  the  social  structure. 
The  term  reason  cannot,  in  short,  be  identified  with  the 
logical  intellect  without  a  grave  departure  even  from  ordi- 
nary usage.  Mr.  Balfour  himself  adopts  the  larger  sense 
involuntarily  from  time  to  time  in  other  passages  of  his 
book,  as  when  he  speaks  of  Reason  as  '  the  roof  and  crown 
of  things  V  or  of  Naturalism  as  deposing  '  Reason  from  its 
ancient  position  as  the  Ground  of  all  existence  '.2  And  if  it 
is  a  deviation  from  ordinary  usage  so  to  restrict  the  term, 
the  disparagement  of  reason  also  sounds  strangely  in  the 
mouth  of  a  thinker.  '  I  express  myself  with  caution,' 
said  Bishop  Butler  in  a  similar  connexion,  '  lest  I  should  be 
mistaken  to  vilify  reason,  which  is  indeed  the  only  faculty 
we  have  wherewith  to  judge  concerning  anything,  even 
revelation  itself  V  The  august  name  of  reason  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  symbol  of  the  unity  of  our  nature  as  intelligences,  and 
the  appeal  to  the  non-rational  soon  leads  us  into  strange 
company  and  to  strange  conclusions. 

This  is  well  exemplified  in  another  volume  characteristic 
of  the  trend  of  thought  towards  the  close  of  the  century. 
Mr.  Kidd's  Social  Evolution,  published  in  1894,  a  year  be- 
fore Mr.  Balfour's  book,  takes  reason  and  rational  in  a  sim- 
ilar narrow  sense.  Dealing  with  its  ethical  and  social  action, 
Mr.  Kidd  identifies  reason  with  the  principle  of  the  baldest 
self-interest,  and  treats  it,  therefore,  as  essentially  a  divisive 
and  disintegrative  force,  reaching  finally  the  monstrous  con- 
clusion that  reason  is  '  the  most  profoundly  individualistic, 
anti-social,  and  anti-evolutionary  of  all  human  qualities  '. 
Naturally,  therefore,  he  is  bound  to  have  recourse  to  what 
1  p.  72.  "  p.  75.  *  Analogy,  Part  I,  chap.  iii. 


64  IDEALISM  AND  NATURALISM  LECT. 

he  calls  '  ultra-rational  sanctions  '  to  explain  the  possibility 
of  social  cohesion  and  social  evolution.  It  is  the  chief  func- 
tion of  religion,  he  says,  to  supply  such  sanctions.  Reli- 
gion, on  the  basis  of  these  definitions,  is  essentially  in  antag- 
onism to  reason.  '  A  rational  religion  is  a  scientific 
impossibility,'  '  the  essential  element  in  all  religious  beliefs  ' 
being  '  the  w/fra-rational  sanction  which  they  provide  for 
social  conduct  V  In  reactionary  circles  the  attack  on  reason, 
and  the  stress  laid  on  religion  as  the  only  bond  of  cohesion 
in  human  society,  were  equally  welcome.  In  France, 
especially,  where  an  anti-religious  scientific  dogmatism  had 
been  peculiarly  pretentious  and  aggressive,  the  ideas  of 
Mr.  Kidd  and  Mr.  Balfour  had  a  great  reception  from 
Brunetiere  and  other  literary  leaders.  Extravagant  prom- 
ises had  been  held  out  in  the  name  of  science — promises 
impossible  of  fulfilment — and  Brunetiere's  phrase,  '  the 
bankruptcy  of  science,'  was  primarily  intended  to  signalize 
the  failure  of  a  materialistically  interpreted  science  to  fulfil 
its  own  programme  as  moral  and  social  guide  of  humanity. 
But  the  controversial  phrase  gained  wide  currency  and  was 
given  a  more  extended  application.  The  bigotry  of  negation 
led  by  revulsion  to  a  temper  of  mind  which  was  ready  to 
discredit  reason  as  such,  and  to  seek  a  refuge  in  the  uncriti- 
cized  simplicities  of  faith.  As  might  have  been  expected 
from  the  terms  in  which  the  controversy  was  stated,  the 
whole  movement  tended  to  be  exploited  in  the  interests  of 
clericalism  and  reaction.  Such  is  the  danger  to  which  the 
assailant  of  reason  inevitably  exposes  himself. 

I  have  dwelt  in  the  latter  part  of  this  lecture  on  the 
tendency  to  slip  into  an  anti-intellectualistic,  and  even  irra- 
tionalistic,  mode  of  statement  in  expressing  the  principle  of 
value,  and  we  have  considered  some  historical  instances  of 
this  tendency  in  the  course  of  the  sixty  years'  controversy. 
I  have  done  so  because  I  believe  that  this  is  to  endanger 
1  Social  Evolution,  chap,  v,  p.  109. 


in    TRUE  ANSWER  TO  NATURALISM    65 

the  principle  itself,  which  is  true  only  when  taken  as  inherent 
in  our  experience  as  a  whole.  A  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand,  and  if  value  is  set  in  opposition  to  reason,  it 
must  inevitably  appear  as  a  subjective  and  arbitrary  judge- 
ment. Hence  the  mere  assertion  of  _lhe_  principle  is  not 
enough;  jt_must  be  articulated  as  far  as  possible  into  a 
.coherent  system  of  reality,  and  shown  to  represent  the 
ultimate  insight  of  a  larger  knowledge.  The  only  ultimately 

>  •.         i  •  •  •'"  *  ••     i  i    ii         •  ii  • 

satisfactory  answer  to  Naturalism  is  a  philosophical  con- 
struction of  reality  which  can  stand  on  its  own  merits.  Such 
a  constructive  theory  should  be  able  to  show  that  Naturalism 
is  essentially  the  substantiation  of  a  fragment  which  can 
exist  only  as  an  element  in  a  larger  whole.  In  other  words, 
the  reassertion  of  human  values  becomes  effective  and  con- 
vincing only  when  it  is  accompanied  by  a  demonstration  that 
.the  naturalistic  conclusions  rest  on  a  misinterpretation  of 
the  nature  of  the  scientific  theories  on  which  they  are  based. 
That  this  is  so  I  hope  to  illustrate  in  the  next  lecture  from 
the  advance  of  science  itself. 


LECTURE  IV 
THE  LIBERATING  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY 

THE  advance  of  science  itself,  and  the  continued  reflec- 
tion of  scientific  men  upon  their  own  principles  and  methods, 
has  been  powerfully  instrumental  within  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  in  relieving  us  from  the  naturajffiic  iflgmfeus. 
This  result  has  been  brought  about  in  two  ways — in  the 
first  instance,  by  a  truer  view  of  the  function  of  scientific 
conceptions  and  the  meaning  of  scientific  laws;  in  the  second 
place,  by  the  advance  of  scientific  knowledge  itself,  more 
especially,  so  far  as  our  present  purpose  is  concerned,  by 
the  development  of  biology  as  a  separate  science.  In  the 
present  lecture  it  is  upon  the  second  point  that  I  wish  to 
dwell,  upon  the  new  insights  gained  from  biological  science, 
and  their  influence  in  eimmcipatin0'  us  from  the  bad 
of  Naturalism.  The  last  half-cenfflfY  *"*?  ***** 
nently  the  age  of  biology.  There  has  been,  of  course,  a 
continued  advance  (in  many  ways  marvellous  and  latterly 
even  revolutionary)  of  physical  and  chemical  science.  But 
biology,  since  the  immense  impetus  given  to  it  by  Darwin, 
has  undoubtedly  stood  in  the  forefront  of  human  interest. 
It  has  exercised  a  more  important  influence  than  any  other 
branch  of  knowledge  in  shaping  our  general  conception  of 
nature  and  man.  And  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  are 
only  now — or  let  us  say,  within  the  last  twenty  years — 
beginning  to  enter,  as  philosophers,  into  the  full  results  of 
the  biologist's  labours. 

In  this  connexion  the  indissoluble  relation  of  philosophy 
to  the  advance  of  scientific  knowledge  and  the  progress  of 
social  experience  is  still  constantly  misconceived.  Phflpsnph- 
ical  theory  is  still  treated  in  many  quarters  as  an  arbitrary 


iv  PHILOSOPHY  AND  EXPERIENCE  67 


speculation  nf  thp  individual  tVi  inker   a  flight  fvf  ffrf  <t 

tion  into  a  transcendent  void,  in  which  the  control  of  facts 
is  entirely  left  behind.  But  there  is  an  often-quoted  meta- 
phor of  Hegel's  —  who  is  usually  deemed  the  most  flagrant 
example  of  this  masterful  transcendent  way  of  thinking  — 
which  might  have  sufficed  to  dissipate  such  misconceptions. 
'  The  owl  of  Minerva  does  not  start  upon  her  flight  till  the 
evening  twilight  has  begun  to  fall.'  '  It  is  only  when  the 
actual  world  has  reached  its  full  fruition  that  the  ideal  rises 


to  confront  the  reality,  and  builds  up,  in  the  shape  of  an 
intellectual  realm,  that  same  world  grasped  in  its  substantial 
being.' 1  Philosophy  is,  and  can  be,  nothing  more  than  the 
critical  interpretation  of  human  experience;  and  in  that 
experience  the  systems  of  knowledge  represented  by  the 
different  sciences  have  obviously  an  important  part. 
Philosophy  is,  in  reference  to  them,  a  criticism  of  the  cate- 
gories or  principles  on  which  they  proceed. 

This  criticism,  it  is  important  to  note,  is  not  an  abstract 
criticism  undertaken  by  the  philosopher  ab  extra,  according 
to  a  priori  or  self -in  vented  canons  of  his  own.     To  such  a 
conception  of  the  philosopher's  attitude  and  pretensions  is 
largely  due  the  suspicion  with  which  the  average  man  of 
science  regards  the  interference  of  the   '  metaphysician '. 
And  it  need  not  be  denied  that  philosophers  in  the  past  have 
often  given  ground  for  such  jealousy.     But  philosophical 
criticism  is  simply  the  thinking  out  and  setting  in  a  clear 
light  of  the  conceptions  and  methods  which  science  actually 
employs.    To  be  fruitful,  such  an  analysis  must  be  the  joint 
outcome  of  the  intimate  acquaintance  of  the  scientific  spe-  I 
cialist  with  his  own  range  of  facts  and  problems,  and  of  the  j 
discipline  in  abstract  thought  and  the  comprehensive  survey  I 
of  experience  which  we  mean  by  philosophy.     The  work  . 
.would  be  best  done  by  the  man  of  science  turned  philosopher; 

1  Werke,  vol.  viii,  pp.  20-1,  at  the  close  of  the  Preface  to  the  Philoso- 
phic des  Rechts. 


68  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

and  although  that  type  is  too  rare,t  it  is  happily  not  non- 
existent. In  any  case,  the  best  work  of  the  kind  is  impossible 
until  scientific  workers  have  themselves  begun  to  reflect 
upon  the  principles  of  their  own  procedure — upon  the  char- 
acteristic modes  of  behaviour  which  they  investigate,  and 
the  nature  of  the  conceptions  by  which  they  instinctively 
interpret  them.  Such  reflection  may  easily  result  in  con- 
flicting theories ;  still  oftener,  from  lack  of  acquaintance  with 
the  counters  of  thought  and  their  past  history  and  associa- 
tions, it  may  fail  to  reach  a  just  expression  of  what  it  really 
intends  to  convey.  But,  on  its  basis,  the  philosopher  proper 
may  then  profitably  take  up  the  work  and  attempt  to  carry 
the  matter  to  a  conclusion,  lending  his  aid  to  set  the  points 
at  issue  in  their  true  light  by  comparison  with  other  fields 
of  experience,  and  using  the  skill  derived  from  his  own 
special  training  to  suggest  an  accurate  and  well-considered 
statement. 

It  is  some  time  before  a  science  reaches  this  stage  of 
reflection.  In  living  contact  with  his  subject-matter,  the 
scientific  worker  learns  instinctively  to  appreciate  its  char- 
acteristic qualities  and  modes  of  behaviour,  and  develops 
appropriate  methods  of  handling  it.  But  if  he  sets  out  to 
formulate  either,  he  will  in  all  likelihood  employ,  to  express 
himself,  the  fossilized  metaphysics  of  common  sense  or  the 
ready-to-hand  terms  of  some  other  science.  In  the  case  of 
biology,  it  was  natural  that  the  prestige  of  physics  and  the 
more  recent  advances  of  chemistry  should  lead,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  the  view  that  the  processes  which  the  biologist 
studies  in  the  organism  are  only  very  complex  examples  of 
the  mechanical  and  chemical  processes  which  are  observable 
•in  non-living  bodies,  and  that  the  ideal  of  explanation  in 
biology  must  therefore  be  a  resolution  of  the  biological  fact 
into  simple  mechanical  relations  and  movements  of  which, 
on  this  view,  it  is  the  combined  result.  Such  a  statement 
was  supposed  to  be  an  analysis  of  the  fact  into  its  ultimate 


iv  BIOLOGY  AND  PHYSICS  69 

terms,  and  in  that  sense  to  be  an  explanation  of  it.  The 
universal  claim  made  for  this  mode  of  explanation  is  strik- 
ingly exemplified,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  Kantian  philoso- 
phy. .The  world  of  science  is  identified  by  Kant  with  the 
sphere  of  applied  mathematics,  the  Newtonian  scheme  of 
acting  and  reacting  particles ;  and  the  world  of  science  is 
conterminous  with  the  realm  of  the  knowable.  But  just  be- 
cause he  limited  the  term  knowledge  in  this  way,  Kant  was 
obliged,  in  order  to  include  the  other  aspects  of  experience, 
to  eke  out  knowledge  by  subjective  principles  of  reflective 
judgement  and  by  ethical  faith,  bequeathing  to  philosophy 
an  arbitrary  and  ultimately  unjustifiable  dualism  between 
knowledge  and  belief.  The  great  biological  advance  belongs 
to  the  century  between  us  and  Kant,  and  we  should  expect 
accordingly  to  find  in  the  science  and  philosophy  of  to-day 
a  more  adequate  interpretation  of  the  characteristic  attri- 
butes of  life  than  is  offered  in  the  Kantian  theory.  On  the 
whole,  this  expectation  is  not  disappointed.  The  mechanistic 
tradition  is  still  strong,  among  '  the  old  guard  '  of  physiolo- 
gists, but  among  the  more  thoughtful  biologists  of  a  younger 
generation,  a  steadily  increasing  number  of  voices  is  heard 
pleading  for  '  the  autonomy  of  life  '.  The  last  series  of 
Gifford  Lectures  delivered  in  this  University  by  Professor 
Driesch,  on  the  '  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the  Organism ', 
sufficiently  attests  the  prominence  of  this  question  at  the 
present  time.  There  are  many  strands  in  M.  Bergson's 
philosophy,  and,  as  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  universe, 
it  must  be  judged  by  ultimate  philosophical  considerations. 
But  undoubtedly  the  most  striking  feature  of  his  thought  is 
the  extent  to  which  it  is  determined  by  the  biological  way 
of  looking  at  things.  The  intimate  appreciation  of  living 
experience  forms  the  basis  of  the  whole  Weltanschauung 
which  he  offers  us.  JHis  philosophy  connects  itself,  there- 
fore, directly  with  the  biological  revolt  against  the  reduction 
of  reality  to  the  interplay  of  physical  constants. 


70  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

There  was  a  further  reason  why  biology  did  not  at  first 
come  to  its  own — why  the  specific  features  of  life  were  for 
long  not  frankly  recognized  in  biological  theory.  When  the 
great  advance  began,  physiology  had  only  recently  emerged 
.from  a  victorious  campaign  against  Vitalism.  \Vhat  was 
then  known  as  Vitalism  consisted  in  the  assertion  of  a  '  vital 
force '  or  '  vital  principle  ',  conceived  as  supplementing  the 
physical  and  chemical  energies  of  the  organism  and  direct- 
ing them  in  the  service  of  the  living  whole.  If  one  may 
judge  from  the  polemic  against  it,  this  vital  force  was  con- 
ceived after  the  fashion  of  an  occult  quality  or  '  metaphysi- 
cal '  entity,  such  as  Comte  denounced  and  of  which  Moliere's 
virtus  dormitiva  is  the  classical  caricature.  It  was  invoked 
to  explain  those  features  of  the  life-processes  which  the 
physical  and  chemical  forces  in  operation  seemed  insufficient 
to  account  for;  and  it  was  itself  conceived  as  a  force  on  the 
same  level — an  independent  source  of  energy,  interfering  in 
a  more  or  less  arbitrary  fashion  with  the  otherwise  mechani- 
cally determined  course  of  intra-organic  events.  Evidently, 
recourse  to  such  an  entity  for  purposes  of  explanation  is 
scientifically  as  illegitimate  as  an  appeal  to  the  miraculous 
interposition  of  the  Deity  by  way  of  explaining  some  partic- 
ular physical  event.  Both  explanations  amount  to  an  en- 
couragement of  intellectual  indolence,  inasmuch  as  they 
seem  to  absolve  us  from  further  research  into  the  natural 
.causation  of  the  phenomenon  in  question.  Whether  the 
biological  facts  can  be  wholly  resolved  into  physical  and 
chemical  facts  or  not,  it  is  plainly  the  duty  of  the  scientific 
investigator  to  press  that  acknowledged  mode  of  explana- 
tion in  all  directions,  to  pursue  it  as  his  ideal  even  though  it 
should  prove  a  flying  goal.1  In  fact,  as  Dr.  J.  S.  Haldane 

1  As  Kant  says,  '  It  is  infinitely  important  for  Reason  not  to  let  slip 
the  mechanism  of  nature  in  its  products,  and  in  their  explanation  not  to 
pass  it  by;  because  without  it  no  insight  into  the  nature  of  things  can 
be  attained.  .  .  .  We  should  explain  all  products  and  occurrences  in  na- 
ture, even  the  most  purposive,  by  mechanism  as  far  as  is  in  our  power. 


iv  THE  OLDER  VITALISM  71 

puts  it,  '  vital  force  was  useless  as  a  means  of  explaining 
phenomena  or  suggesting  definite  paths  of  investigation,  and 
_was  even  blocking  further  progress.  The  mechanistic  the- 
ory, on  the  other  hand,  suggested  at  every  point  clear  and 
intelligible  working  hypotheses  for  further  investigation.'  l 
Accordingly,  during  the  greater  part  of  last  century  the 
acknowledged  working  hypotheses  of  nearly  all  physiologists 
and  biologists  were  of  a  mechanistic  order.  Biology,  as 
a  consequence,  if  not  actually  incorporated  with  physics,  ty 
presented,  at  all  events  from  the  wider  point  of  view  of 
philosophy,  the  appearance  of  a  vassal  state.  The  frontiers 
of  mechanism  were  thus  thrust  forward  to  the  very  confines 
of  the  physical  or  conscious,  which,  in  turn,  came  in 
many  quarters  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  inert  accom- 
paniment or  appendage  of  a  series  of  strictly  mechanical 
transformations. 

,But-the  concentrated  biological  research  of  the  last  fifty 
years,  while  it  has  immensely  extended  our  knowledge  of 
the  mechanics  and  the  chemistry  of  organic  processes,  Jias, 
strikingly  failed  to  substantiate  the  mechanistic  hypothesis 
from  which  most  of  the  researchers  started. 


coming  nearer,  the  reduction  of  biological  processes  to  terms 
of  mechanism  appears  to  recede,  as  knowledge  deepens  and 
becomes  more  intimate;  and  the  recognition  of  this  has 
led  within  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  to  a  significant 
revival  of  '  neo-vitalistic  '  theories  among  the  younger 
generation  of  botanists  and  zoologists.  Professing  to  reject 
the  old  idea  of  '  vital  force  '  as  an  additional  force  or  entity 
acting  on  the  same  plane  as  the  physical  and  chemical  forces, 

But  at  the  same  time  [he  adds  significantly],  we  are  not  to  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  those  things  which  we  cannot  even  state  for  investigation  except 
under  the  concept  of  a  purpose  of  Reason,  must,  in  conformity  with  the" 
essential  constitution  of  our  Reason,  and  notwithstanding  those  me-" 
chanical  causes,  be  subordinated  by  us  finally  to  causality  in  accord- 
.  ance  with  purposes.'  Critique  of  Judgment,  section  78  (Bernard's 
translation,  pp.  326,  333). 

1  Life  and  Mechanism,  Two  Lectures  (1906),  p.  5. 


72  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

_  these  neo-vitalists  yet  insist,  not  only  that  there  are  features 
of  organic  process  which  are  wholly  inexplicable  from  the 
point  of  view  of  pure  mechanism,  but  that  no  vital  process 
whatever,  however  simple  and,  at  first  sight,  purely  physical 
^it  may  seem,  admits  of  adequate  statement  in  merely 
physical  terms.  They  claim,  therefore,  that  biology  must 
stand  alongside  of  physics  as  an  '  autonomous '  science, 
which  has  a  right  to  use  its  own  terms — the  only  appropriate 
terms  or  categories — to  describe  the  facts  with  which  it 
-deals.1 

Outstanding  phenomena  constantly  .referred  to  as  forcing 
us  beyond  the  mechanical  point  of  view  are  such  as  Jhe 
restitution  of  lost  or  injured  parts,  seen  on  a  small  scale  in 
the  healing  of  any  wound,  but  more  strikingly  exemplified 
I  in  many  of  the  lower  animals.  If  a  newt's  hand  is  ampu- 
tated, the  stump  of  the  limb  grows  a  new  hand  to  make  good 
the  mutilation  and  thus  restore  the  vital  functions  of  the 
creature  to  their  normal  condition.  Similarly,  the  Tubu- 
laria,  a  kind  of  sea-anemone,  re-grows  its  flower-like  head. 
Moreover,  as  Driesch  points  out,  '  you  may  cut  the  stem  at 
whatever  level  you  like;  a  certain  length  of  stem  will  always 
restore  the  new  head  by  the  co-operation  of  its  parts  '.2  So 
again,  the  elaborate  embryological  experiments  of  Driesch 
and  others  have  shown  that  disturbances  of  the  normal 
development  of  the  egg,  and  the  removal  at  an  early  stage 
of  parts  normally  destined  to  develop  into  certain  parts  of 
the  adult  organism,  may  take  place,  and  that  a  typically 
complete  embryo  will  still  be  developed.  Similarly  in 
organisms  of  a  low  type,  if  the  creature  is  cut  in  two,  the 

1  One  of  Driesch's  books  is  entitled  Biologic  als  selbstandige  Wissen- 
schaft,  and  the  same  idea  explains  the  title  of  Professor  J.  Arthur 
Thomson's  two  articles  in  the  Hibbert  Journal  (October  1911  and  Janu- 
ary 1912),  'Is  there  One  Science  of  Nature?'  Cf.  the  same  writer's 
Introduction  to  Science,  p.  163;  Evolution,  p.  231;  also  Karl  Pearson, 
Grammar  of  Science,  chap,  ix,  '  Life ',  section  6. 

1  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the  Organism,  vol.  i,  p.  127. 


iv  FEATURES  OF  LIVING  ACTION  73 

separated  segments  will,  in  some  cases,  complete  themselves 
as  independent  animals.     Thus  we  are  met  everywbfiSfiJjJL 
the  idea  of  the  whole.    Such  phenomena  are  only  peculiarly 
striking  examples  of  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  every 
living  thing.     The  organism  is  a  self -conserving  systemJ  /7 
building  itself  up  by  appropriating  from  its  environment 
suitable  material,  which  it  transforms  into  its  own  tissue; 
responding  continuously  to  changes  in  its  surroundings  by 
adaptive  processes,  which  it  is  observed  to  vary  repeatedly/1 
should  the  first  effort  prove  unsuccessful  in  achieving  its 
end;   and,   finally,   regulating   in   the   minutest   and   most 
delicate  fashion  the  action  of  each  of  its  parts  in  the  interest 
of  the  whole. 

It  is  perhaps  the  last-mentioned  feature  of  organic  proc- 
esses— their  regulation  or  co-ordination  in  the  interest  of 
the  living  whole — that  has  been  most  conclusively  established 
by  the  progress  of  research.  '  It  is  only  quite  recently  ',  says 
Dr.  Haldane,  '  that  we  have  come  to  realize  the  astounding 
fineness  with  which  the  kidneys,  respiratory  centres,  and 
other  parts  regulate  the  composition  of  the  blood.' l  It  is 
the  same  with  the  regulation  of  the  production  and  loss  of 
heat  which  maintains  the  temperature  of  the  body  approxi- 
mately constant.  To  state  it  generally,  processes  of  absorp- 
tion and  secretion  which  might  easily  seem  at  first  sight  to 
proceed  entirely  on  a  physical  level — and  which  were,  in 
fact,  long  treated  by  physiologists  as  mere  mechanical  proc- 
esses of  filtration  and  diffusion — reveal  themselves  on  closer 
analysis  as  selective  in  character  and  controlled  throughout 
in  the  interest  of  the  individual  organism  as  a  whole.  And 
the  same  is  true  of  reflex  action  conceived  as  an  immediate 
and  definitely  determined  response  to  a  sensory  stimulus. 
This  is  the  ideal  and  the  basis  of  the  mechanical  explanation 
of  life  in  the  hands  of  Loeb  and  others.  But  the  tropisms 
and  the  phenomena  of  '  taxis  '  on  which  Loeb  lays  so  much 
1  Mechanism,  Life  and  Personality,  p.  49. 


74  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

-  stress  have  been  shown  by  Jennings  to  be  '  not  simple  and 
immediate  processes  of  orientation  at  all '  but  the  final  re- 
sult of  many  different  single  performances  on  the  part  of 
the  animal.  They  are  not  the  direct  result  of  physico- 
chemical  attraction,  but  are  reached,  in  the  main,  by  the 
method  of  trial  and  error.1  Similarly  in  the  vertebrates  the 
spinal  reflexes,  often  taken  as  types  of  the  pure  reflex,  are 
shown  to  be  '  determined  by  all  that  happened  and  is  happen- 
ing in  other  parts  of  the  moving  body  '.2  As  Dr.  Haldane 
points  out,  '  if  we  examine  a  reflex  such  as  that  of  assuming 
a  normal  position  or  removing  an  irritant,  it  soon  appears 
that  it  is  by  no  means  the  simple  mechanical  response  which 
it  may  at  first  sight  be  taken  to  be.  The  physical  response 
varies  endlessly  according  to  circumstances.  It  is  the  end 
attained,  and  not  the  physical  response,  which  is  simple  and 
.definite  V  We  cannot  therefore  treat  any  reflex  action  as 
an  isolated  phenomenon;  its  independence  is  only  relative, 
and  instead  of  the  behaviour  of  the  organism  being  re- 
solvable into  a  combination  of  such  elementary  mechanisms, 
these  actions  appear  more  truly  from  the  biological  point  of 
view  as  themselves  '  secondarily  automatic '  in  character, 
that  is  to  say,  as  arrangements  fixed  by  habit  and  inheritance 
in  the  service  of  the  living  creature  as  a  whole,  and  never 
completely  withdrawn  from  central  control. 

The  fact  is,  that  in  the  organism  we  are  face  to  face  for 
the  first  time  with  the  real  individual 4  whose  nature  is  '  to 

1  Cf.  Loeb's  essay  on  '  The  Mechanistic  Conception  of  Life ';  Jennings, 
Behaviour  of  Lower  Organisms,  p.  252 ;  Driesch,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  19. 
3  Driesch,  vol.  ii,  p.  33. 

*  Life  and  Mechanism,  p.  41. 

*  Such  a  statement  is  not  affected  by  the  fact  that,  even  in  the  realm 
of  life,  what  we  regard  as  an  individual  may  be  said  to  depend  on  the 
context  of  our  interests.    To  the  physiologist,  expounding  the  minute 
structure  of  the  body  and  the  functions  of  its  parts,  the  unit  may  be  the 
cell ;  but  to  the  ordinary  man,  and  to  the  physiologist  himself  outside  of 
his  professional  work,  the  natural  unit  is  the  living  creature  as  a  whole. 
The  unity  of  a  complex  organism  is  supra-individual  with  reference  to 
the  society  of  co-operating  cells  of  which  it  is  composed.    But  that  does 


iv  A  SELF-MAINTAINING  WHOLE  75 

maintain  and  reproduce  in  the  face  of  varying  environment 
its  structure  and  activities  as  a  whole  V  This  may  be 
said  to  be  the  fundamental  assumption  of  biology.  _F*- 
ology  deals,  not  with  transformations  of  matter  and  energy, 
but  with  the  relations  of  organisms  and  their  environment. 
Of  course,  the  physical  laws  hold  good  throughout;  it  is 
easy,  for  example,  to  measure  the  amount  of  energy  gained 
or  lost  in  the  course  of  vital  activities.  But  the  commerce 
of  the  organism  and  its  environment  can  only  be  understood 
in  terms  of  teleology  or  purpose.  The  organism  is  a  self- 
conserving  system  which  acts  as  a  whole,  and  none  of  the 
actions  of  its  parts  can  be  fully  or  naturally  understood 
except  as  the  determinate  function  of  such  a  system. 
^Life  ',  I  urged  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  '  is  the  presuo- 
v  position  of  physiology,  the  fact  on  which  its  existence  is 
based,  a  fact  which  it  has  simply  to  accept,  as  all  the  other 
sciences  have  to  accept  their  own  presuppositions.  Xts  ex- 
planations move  within  the  fact  of  life,  and  cannot  be  used  to 
explain  that  fact  itself,  or  in  other  words  to  explain  it  away. 
Yet  that  is  in  substance  what  a  purely  mechanical  physiology 
.tries  to  do.' 2  It  is  only,  I  would  add,  because  he  so  instinc- 
tively assumes  this  in  practice  that,  when  he  begins  to  reflect, 
the  physiologist  is  in  danger  of  failing  to  notice  his  own 
assumption  and  of  leaving  it  out  of  his  theory.  Terms  like 
stimulus,  response,  behaviour,  all  imply  the  notion  of  selec- 
tion, the  power  of  adaptation  to  environrnental  change,  by 
which  the  organism  maintains  and  develops  its  own  charac- 
teristic being.  All  this  seems  to  be  involved  in  the  notion 

not  mean  that  the  unity  of  the  organism  is  less  individual  than  that  of 
its  component  cells.  Its  real  individuality,  translated  into  terms  of 
feeling,  is  matter  of  direct  experience  to  each  of  us  in  our  own  case,  and 
we  cannot  doubt  that  this  is  an  intenser  and  more  perfect  individuality 
than  that  of  the  minor  individuals  on  which  it  is  based,  but  which  ft 
seems  almost  to  absorb. 

1  Life  and  Mechanism,  p.  43. 

*  Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos,  2nd  ed.,  pp.  76-8,  in  an  essay  on  '  The 
"  New  "  Psychology  and  Automatism  '. 


76  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

jpi  a  real  individual.  Physics  knows  no  self-maintaining  in- 
dividuals— only  a  continuous  transmutation  of  energy.  It 
is  fundamentally  misleading  to  swamp  the  organism  in  its 
environment — to  treat  the  living  being  simply  as  a  network 
of  pathways  through  which  the  energy  of  external  nature 
takes  its  course,  soaks  in  and  oozes  out  again.  We  are 
misled  by  physical  phrases  like  currents  of  energy  and  paths 
of  least  resistance.  Such  phrases  seem  to  imply  that  what 
takes  place  is  precisely  the  same  as  the  selection  of  a  channel 
jby  a  rill  of  water  trickling  down  a  hill-side.  But  this  is  not 
a  true  account  even  of  the  humblest  organism.  Nerve 
currents  cannot  be  treated  in  this  isolated  fashion,  as  if 
they  took  place  in  vacuo  or  in  an  indifferent  medium;  they 
take  place  in  a  living  individual,  and  apart  from  the  unity  of  , 
Uhat  individual,  they  are  mere  abstractions.  .A  nerve-current 
means,  originally  and  normally,  central  stimulation  and  ap- 
propriate central  reaction ;  and  neither  the  appreciation  of 
vthe  stimulus  nor  the  nature  of  the  response  can  be  under- 
stood apart  from  the  organism  as  a  self-maintaining  whole. 
Purposiveness,  in  short,  is  the  very  notion  on  which  physi- 

^^•^•••••••^••••••B^^^^*  ••••••••••••••^^••••••'••^^••••H^BMMMMMMfMaHMAMH* 

ology  is  built,  and  it  is  worked  into  the  whole  theory  of 
•  levelopment.1  Yet  it  is  a  notion  entirely  alien  to  the  blind 
vis  a  tergo  of  mechanism  as  such.  The  more  clearly,  there- 
fore, a  physiologist  realizes  what  pure  mechanism  means, 
and  the  more  fully  he  grasps  the  import  of  the  processes  with 
which  he  himself  habitually  deals,  the  more  ready  will  be 
his  acknowledgement  that  they  belong  to  a  different  order 
of  facts.  As  it  was  put  in  the  passage  already  quoted  from 
Kant,  the  phenomena  in  question  are  such  as  *  we  cannot 
even  state  for  investigation  except  under  the  concept  of 

1  Dr.  Haldane  very  properly  points  out  that,  whatever  stress  the 
theory  of  evolution  may  lay  on  natural  selection  as  a  mechanically  act- 
ing cause,  natural  selection  could  not  act  unless  we  assumed  that  each 
organism  actively  maintains  and  reproduces  its  particular  structure  and 
activities.  Natural  selection  is  thus  a  cause  operating  only  within  the 
presuppositions  of  life,  within  a  world  of  living  creatures. 


iv  NEC-VITALISM  ft 

.a  purpose  qf  Reason  V  'A  self-stoking,  self-repairing, 
self-preservative,  self-adjusting,  self-increasing,  self-repro- 
ducing machine  ' 2  is  only  by  an  abuse  of  language  spoken  of 
as  a  machine  at  all. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as  committing  myself  to 
any  of  the  current  statements  of  what  is  called  '  Neo- 
Vitalism  '.  Most  of  the  writers  thus  referred  to  are  careful 
to  disclaim  the  implications  which  brought  discredit  on  the 
older  Vitalism,  and  they  seek  to  avoid  its  phraseology.  I 
am  not  sure,  however,  that  they  always  succeed.  It  is  cer- 
tain, at  any  rate,  that  they  are  more  successful  as  critics  of 
the  mechanistic  theory  than  in  the  precise  statement  of  their 
own  position.  Even  the  most  recent  theories,  such  as 
Driesch's  elaborate  theory  of  Snteloehies  or  Psychoids  and 
Reinke's  theory  of  Q.ojninanLs,  seem  to  lapse  into  statements 
which  perilously  resemble  the  older  doctrine  which  they 
repudiate.  Thus  Professor  Driesch  begins  by  telling  us 
that  '  entelechy  is  not  a  kind  of  energy ',  '  it  lacks  all  the 
characteristics  of  quantity  ', '  it  is  order  of  relation  and  noth- 
ing else  '.3  But  he  constantly  speaks  of  it  as  an  agent.4 
The  '  psychoid  or  entelechy  uses  the  conductive  and  specific 
faculties  of  the  brain  as  a  piano-player  uses  the  piano  ' 
(ii.  97).  Hence,  although  he  refuses  to  speak  of  'psycho- 
physical  '  interaction  (seeing  that  he  refuses  to  attribute 

1  So  again,  in  a  passage  perhaps  more  frequently  quoted :  '  Absolutely 
no  human  Reason  .  .  .  can  hope  to  understand  the  production  ot  even"" 
a  blade  of  grass  by  mere  mechanical  causes.    As  regards  the  possibility 
of  such  an  object,  the..  Ideological  connection  of  causes  and  effects  is 
quite  indispensable  for  the  Judgment,  even  for  studying  it  by  the  clue  of 
experience.'     Critique  of  Judgment,  section  77  ad  finem  (Bernard,  p.  326) . 

2  I  take  this  array  of  terms  from  Professor  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  who  also 
points  out  that,  in  the  common  comparison  of  the  organism  to  a  machine, 
we  forget  that  the  latter  is  no  ordinary  sample  of  the  inorganic  world. 
'  It  has  inside  of  it  a  human  thought '  (Hibbert  Journal,  vol.  x,  p.  121). 

'  Vol.  ii,  p.  169. 

4  Entelechy,  in  a  stricter  sense,  he  says,  is  '  the  natural  agent  which 
forms  the  body ' ;  the  psychoid  is  '  the  elemental  agent  which  directs  it ' 
(vol.  ii,  p.  82).  And  again  (p.  238),  entelechy  is  'a  well-established 
elemental  agent '. 


78  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY         LECT. 

psychical  characteristics  to  the  psychoid),  he  recognizes 
'  interactions  between  physico-chemical  and  non-physico- 
chemical  agents  of  nature  '  (ii.  117). 


by  and  acts  upon  spatial  causality,  as  if  it  came  out  of  an 
ultra-spatial  dimension;  it  does  not  act  in  space,  it  acts  into 
space;  it  is  not  in  space,  it  only  has  points  of  manifestation 
in  space  '  (ii.  235).  In  order  to  reconcile  this  action  with  the 
physical  theory  of  energy,  he  explains  that  its  function  must 
be  purely  regulative.  Jintelechy  possesses,  he  says,  ^he 
power  to  suspend  reactions  which  would  otherwise  take  place 
(thus  converting  kinetic  into  potential  energy),  and  the 
power  subsequently  to  'release  the  energy  thus  stored,  and 
permit  '  the  mechanical-energetical  events  to  continue  their 
course  from  the  point  where  it  was  broken'  (ii.  221). 
Entelechy,  however,  cannot  transform  every  kind  of  poten- 
tial energy  into  the  kinetic  forms;  for  that  would  mean 
removing  the  obstacle  which  had  hitherto  impeded  the  trans- 
formation, and  '  that  would  require  energy  '.  But  for  sus- 
pending a  reaction  and  subsequently  relaxing  that  suspen- 
sion, he  tells  us,  '  no  transfer  of  energy  is  required,  but 
simply  a  transformation  of  energy  from  actuality  into  a 
potential  form  and  vice  versa  '  .  Entelechy  is  thus  (as  he  puts 
it  in  a  headline)  'burdened  with  as  little  as  possible',  but 
*  this  faculty  of  a  temporary  suspension  of  inorganic  be- 
coming is  the  most  essential  ontological  characteristic  of  en- 
telechy'  (ii.  180-5).  He  refers  several  times  in  illustration 
to  Clerk  Maxwell's  well-known  fiction,  and  concludes,  '  the 
work  of  Clerk  Maxwell's  "  demons  "  is  here  regarded  as 
actually  accomplished'  (ii.  225). 

Now  the  objection  to  this  whole  mode  of  statement  is  the 
same  as  to  the  older  Vitalism.  Jt  treats  Hfp  nr  pnffjprhy^ 
essentially  on  the  physical  level,  as  an  additional  force  act- 
ing ab  extra  upon  a  set  of  physical  and  chemical  forces 
which,  apart  from  this  interference,  are  conceived  as  going 
by  themselves.  So  Driesch  speaks,  as  we  have  seen,  of  '  the 


iv  DEFECTIVE  STATEMENTS  79 

mechanical-energetical  events  continuing  their  course  ',  as 
"  soon  as  the  momentary  interference  of  entelechy  is  at  an 
end ;  apart  from  this  '  temporary  suspension  ',  he  appears  to 
regard  the  processes  that  take  place  in  the  organism  as  sim- 
ply '  inorganic  happening '.  It  seems  to  me  fundamentally 
wrong  to  insert  life  in  this  fashion  into  a  system  otherwise 
regarded  as  purely  mechanical,  and  then  to  seek  to  apologize 
for  the  intrusion  by  reducing  its  action  to  a  minimum — 
'  burdening  entelechy  with  as  little  as  possible  '.  Once  em- 
barked on  such  calculations,  Tjvjnfess  T  fail  tn  see  why^  if 
expenditure  of  energy  is  involved  in  removing  the  obstacle 
which,  in  ordinary  cases,  prevents  the  transformation  of 
potential  into  kinetic  energy,  no  expenditure  should  be  in- 
volved in  the  operations  of  suspension  and  subsequent  re- 
Jease.  From  the  physical  point  of  view,  suspension  must 
surely  mean  the  interposition  of  some  obstacle,  and  release 
must  mean  its  removal.  This  seems  to  me,  accordingly,  no 
true  vindication  of  '  the  autonomy  of  life  '.  The  autonomy 
of  life,  or  the  independence  of  biology,  means,  as  I  interpret 
it,  that  physical  and  chemical  categories  are  superseded 
throughout — that  we  must  pass  to  another  range  of  con- 
ceptions altogether,  if  we  wish  to  describe  accurately  the 
behaviour  of  anything  that  lives.  Strictly  speaking,  ther^ 
is  no  '  inorganic  happening  '  in  a  living  creature.  We  may, 
of  course,  by  the  ordinary  method  of  scientific  abstraction, 
isolate  different  aspects  of  what  happens,  and  usefully  study 
organic  processes,  at  one  time  from  a  purely  physical,  at  an- 
other time  from  a  chemical,  point  of  view.  But  such  ac- 
counts do  not  represent  anything  independently  real,  as  if  we 
had  a  set  of  facts  into  which  life  enters  and  which  it  proceeds 
to  manipulate.  The  organism  as  '  an  autonomous  active 
whole  ',  every  function  in  which  is  centrally  or  organically 
determined,  is  the  only  conception  which  suffices  to  describe 
the  biological  facts;  and  however  mechanistic  a  physiologist 
may  be  when  he  is  working  at  the  details  of  specific  move- 


8o  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY          LECT. 

ments  and  connexions,  he  will  be  found  recurring  instinc- 
tively and  unavoidably  to  this  fundamental  conception  as 
soon  as  he  begins  to  speak  of  the  physiological  fact  as  a  whole 
in  its  proper  nature,  and  to  discuss,  for  example,  the  funda- 
mental phenomena  of  assimilation,  growth,  and  reproduc- 
tion.1 

I  have  not  the  training,  nor  would  this  be  the  place,  to 
pursue  this  discussion  into  further  technical  detail.  My 
purpose  is  simply  to  emphasize  the  significance  of  the  bio- 
logical demand  for  more  adequate  categories.  The  biolo- 
gist's claim  of  '  autonomy  '  is  just  the  assertion  of  his  right 
to  take  the  facts  as  he  finds  them,  instead  of  forcing  them 
into  the  Procrustes  bed  of  a  preconceived  theory.  By  ex- 

1  Driesch's  italicized  description  of  entelechy  as  not  acting  in  space 
but  '  into  space  ',  '  as  if  it  came  out  of  an  ultra-spatial  dimension  ',  might 
be  taken,  perhaps,  as  no  more  than  an  assertion  of  the  fact  that  the 
organism  as  such  overcomes  or  rises  above  the  purely  spatial  relations 
of  physical  science.  Just  so  far  as  the  organism  is  a  real  whole,  and  its 
parts  members  one  of  another,  to  that  extent  these  parts  cannot  be  treated 
as  mutually  external  facts  interacting  in  space,  and  the  causality  of  the 
whole  cannot  be  treated  as  the  combined  result  of  these  separate  actions. 
Driesch  describes  the  '  ultra-spatial '  action  of  entelechy  as  constituting 
'  the  very  essence  of  vitalism,  of  non-materialism '.  But  he  does  not 
maintain  himself  at  this  level  of  thought;  and  to  seek  to  explain  the 
fundamental  characteristic  of  living  action  by  referring  it  to  the  causality 
of  a  separate  agent  is,  in  reality,  a  failure  to  rise  above  the  mechanical 
point  of  view.  And  we  do  not  escape  from  the  ingrained  materialism  of 
ordinary  thought  by  the  easy  (but,  as  history  shows,  completely  ineffec- 
tive) device  of  calling  our  agents  and  entities  '  immaterial '. 

Reinke's  '  dominants ',  so  far  as  I  am  acquainted  with  his  theory,  seem 
to  resemble  Driesch's  entelechies  or  psychoids.  He  means  by  the  term, 
he  says, '  those  secondary  forces  in  the  organism  whose  existence  we  are 
forced  to  recognize,  but  which  we  cannot  further  analyse  .  .  .  that  prin- 
ciple of  control  which  sways  whatever  energies  are  available,  just  as 
men  use  tools  or  machines '.  The  term  is  used  in  the  plural  simply  be- 
cause the  manifestations  of  control  are  manifold;  and  he  tells  us  that 
the  term  has  been  devised  '  to  provide  a  short  explanatory  description  of 
certain  essential  processes ',  not  as  implying  '  a  troop  of  ghosts  with 
which  I  have  peopled  the  cells  and  organs  of  animals  and  plants'.  But 
in  his  treatment  of  the  '  dominants '  as  '  forces ',  and  in  his  designation 
of  them  as  secondary  forces  (Krdfte  sweiler  Hand),  whose  function  is 
to  control  and  guide  the  '  primary '  forces  of  which  physics  and  chem- 
istry give  an  account,  his  theory  seems  open  to  the  same  objections  as 
that  of  Driesch. 


iv  NEW  PERSPECTIVES  81 

hibiting  the  insufficiency  of  the  purely  mechanical  theory 
which  was  the  inherited  assumption  of  the  science  in  the 
middle  of  last  century,  the  progress  of  biological  reflection 
has  helped,  to  that  extent,  to  dissipate  the  apprehensions 
caused  by  the  apparent  inclusion  of  living  beings — man  be- 
ing no  exception — within  a  completely  determined  system 
of  physical  necessity.  For,  undoubtedly,  the  first  impres- 
sion produced  by  the  theory  of  evolution  in  its  Darwinian 
form  (with  exclusive  or  almost  exclusive  stress  on  natural 
selection  as  its  explaining  cause)  was  that  of  a  universal 
levelling-down,  man  linked  by  his  genealogy  with  the  lowest 
forms  of  animal  life,  from  which,  by  slow  and  insensible 
gradations,  his  physical  and  mental  faculties  had  been  de- 
veloped, the  rudimentary  forms  of  life  itself  being  but  com- 
plex specifications  of  inorganic  molecules.  The  result 
seemed  to  be  the  victory  of  materialism  all  along  the  line. 
It  is  not  astonishing,  therefore,  that  Darwinism,  as  having 
apparently  supplied  the  most  fatal  weapon  against  the  higher 
view  of  man's  place  in  the  universe — as  claiming,  so  to 
speak,  to  complete  the  materialistic  proof — should  have  been 
at  first  an  object  of  terror  and  obloquy  to  the  average  the- 
ological mind  of  the  generation  which  witnessed  its  rise. 
And  this  general  impression  was  not  likely  to  be  removed  by 
the  facile  Berkeleian  or  Humian  sensationalism  with  which 
Huxley  sought  to  evade  an  explicitly  materialistic  conclu- 
sion, by  Lange's  hardly  less  unsatisfactory  Kantianism,  or 
by  the  agnosticism,  derived  impartially  from  Kant  and 
Hume,  to  which  the  scientific  thinkers  of  the  day  relegated 
all  the  final  questions  of  philosophic  thought. 

One  thing  at  least  the  sequel  should  teach  us — the  faith- 
lessness and  the  foolishness  of  despairing  as  to  the  future  of 
the  instincts  and  beliefs  which  constitute  man's  higher  na- 
ture. These  are  indeed  imperishable,  the  supreme  example  of 
that  power  of  self -maintenance  and  of  adaptation  to  chang- 
ing circumstance  which,  science  teaches  us,  is  the  character- 


82  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY  LECT. 

istic  of  all  that  lives.    Changes  in  our  conception  of  nature 
may  be  fatal  to  one  formulation  after  another;  accidents  of 
expression  may  drop  away  in  deference  to  historical  criti- 
cism, nay,  much  that  seemed  of  the  very  essence  of  religious 
faith  may  have  to  be  left  behind.     But  each  time  that  the 
earthly  body  of  a  belief  is  laid  in  the  dust,  it  receives  a  more 
glorious  spiritual  body,  in  which  it  continues  to  function  as 
.of  old  in  the  heart  of  man.     Timid  theologians  who  trem- 
•  ble  for  the  ark  of  God  at  every  advance  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge do  but  repeat  the  sacrilege  of  Uzzah  in  the  sacred 
legend,  smitten  by  the  anger  of  heaven  for  his  officious  inter- 
ference.    Faith,  which  is  an  active  belief  in  the  reality  of 
the  ideal,  is  the  very  breath  by  which  humanity  lives,  and  it 
will  reconstitute  itself  afresh  as  long  as  the  race  endures. 

And  it  is  significant  how  little  we  can  forecast  the  course 
jof  new  ideas,  the  ultimate  forms  they  will  assume,  and  the 
mature  of  the  influence  they  are  eventually  destined  to  exer- 
fcise  on  our  world-view.  Thus  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
seemed  at  first,  as  we  have  seen,  to  thrust  man  ruthlessly 
back  into  the  lower  circles  of  nature  and  to  make  for  an  all- 
engulfing  materialism.  But,  in  another  perspective,  the  proc- 
ess of  evolution  as  a  whole,  with  man  as  its  crowning  prod- 
uct, may  be  held  to  reintroduce  into  nature,  on  a  grander 
scale  and  in  a  more  tangible  form,  the  idea  of  end  or  aim 
which  the  theory  of  natural  selection  had  done  its  best  to 
banish  from  the  details  of  her  procedure.  Although  the  end 
is  achieved,  according  to  the  theory,  by  purely  mechanical 
means,  and  is  the  end,  therefore,  only  in  the  sense  of  being 
the  last  term,  the  successive  steps  in  any  process  may  always 
be  regarded  Ideologically  as  means  towards  the  final  achieve- 
ment ;  and  so  Darwin  may  be  taken  as  replacing  man  in  the 
position  from  which  he  was  ousted  by  Copernicus,  l^an^ 
appears,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  so  inter- 
.preted,  as  the  goal  and  crown  of  nature's  long  upward 
effort.  _  The  evolution  of  ever  higher  forms  of  life,  and 


iv  DARWIN  RE-INTERPRETED  83 

ultimately  of  intelligence,  appears  as  the  event  to  which  the 
whole  creation  moves ;  and,  accordingly,  man  is  once  more, 
as  in  pre-Copernican  days,  set  in  the  heart  of  the  world, 
somehow  centrally  involved  in  any  attempt  to  explain  it. 
The  mere  concentration  of  men's  minds  upon  the  biological 
history  tended  to  discount  the  influence  of  the  astronomical 
outlook  in  dwarfing  man's  importance.  And,  after  all,  the 
evolution  of  life  may  take  place  similarly  on  innumerable 
other  planetary  worlds  where  the  conditions  permit;  the 
point  is  the  central  importance  of  the  living  and  sentient 
as  compared  with  its  inorganic  environment.  The  very 
term  environment  indicates  a  subsidiary  function,  and  the 
usage  is  characteristic  of  the  biological  point  of  view. 

So  again,  what  presented  itself  to  the  earlier  evolutionists 
as  the  naturalizing  of  man  appears  to  a  later  generation 
rather  as  a  humanizing  of  nature,  in  view  of  the  continuity 
of  the  process  by  which  the  higher  emerges  from  the  lower. 
We  all  remember  Professor  Huxley's  denunciation  of  '  the 
cosmic  process  ',  his  poignant  insistence  on  the  sheer  breach 
between  ethical  man  and  pre-human  nature,  insomuch  that 
he  represented  Lthe  ethical  proygfjfi  *  nn  wl-iirTi  society  de- 
pends as  essentially  a  reversal  of  the  cosmic  process  at  every 
_ste|).  '  In  place  of  ruthless  self-assertion,  it  demands  self- 
restraint;  in  place  of  thrusting  aside,  or  treading  down  all 
it  requires,  thai  the  individual  shall  not  merely 


respect,  but  shall  help,  his  fellows.'  As  regards  pre-human 
animal  nature,  Professor  Huxley  held,  in  fact,  what  he  him- 
self characterizes  as  'the  gladiatorial  theory  of  existence  '; 
and  this  is  admittedly  impossible  to  harmonize  with  any 
ethical  ideal  hitherto  known  among  men.  This  gladiatorial 
theory  is  itself  a  reflection  of  the  omnipresent  struggle  for 
existence  which  so  exclusively  dominates  the  picture  of  na- 
ture given  us  by  Darwin  and  his  immediate  successors.  To 
this  vivid  idea,  indeed,  suggested  to  Darwin  by  his  reading 
of  Malthus,  and  reflecting,  as  Professor  Geddes  and  others 


84  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY  LECT. 

have  pointed  out,  the  keen  competitive  conditions  of  an  in- 
dustrial age,  we  owe  the  whole  theory  of  natural  selection. 
But  later  biologists  have  greatly  modified  the  original  Dar- 
winian conception.  It  seems  certain  that  natural  selection 
is  only  one  cause  among  several  that  determine  the  course  of 
evolution.  And  animate  nature,  as  these  writers  remind  us, 
presents  other  aspects  than  that  of  a  relentless  struggle  for 
a  scanty  subsistence.  It  has  its  aspects  of  bountiful  plenty 
and  of  peaceful  happiness.  But,  above  all,  animal  life  is 
not  expressible  in  terms  of  the  economics  of  modern  com- 
mercialism. Its  foundations  are  laid,  as  Professor  Arthur 
Thomson  says,  on  the  facts  of  sex  and  parenthood.  Jn  the 
attraction  uf  mate  for  mate  and  in  the  care  of  offspring,  as 
well  as  in  the  further  facts  of  association  and  co-operation 
in  flocks  and  herds,  we  can  see  prefigured  the  altruistic  vir- 
tues which  form  the  staple  of  our  human  morality.1  The 
exclusive  individualism  of  the  early  evolutionists  was  in 
some  measure  due  to  the  economic  doctrines  and  practice  of 
their  age.  But  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  even  if  we  look  only 
at  the  struggle  for  existence  itself,  that  struggle  takes  place 
not  only  or  chiefly  between  individuals,  but  in  its  intensest 
form  between  different  societies;  and  in  that  struggle  the 
qualities  which  make  for  social  efficiency  are  those  which  are 
most  important,  and  which  are  furthered  therefore  by  the 
principle  of  natural  selection.  We  may  expect,  accordingly, 
as  Karl  Pearson  says,  that  '  Science  will  ultimately  balance 
the  individualistic  and  socialistic  tendencies  in  evolution  bet- 
ter than  Haeckel  and  Spencer  seem  to  have  done  \2  Science 
has,  in  fact,  already  begun  to  do  so,  and  it  is  an  ironic  re- 
flection that  Nietzsche's  apotheosis  of  the  gladiatorial  theory 
and  the  purely  individualistic  ideal  was  given  to  the  world 
as  the  last  word  of  biological  science,  just  as  the  patient 

1  Cf.  Geddes  and  Thomson's  Evolution,  p.  175 ;  Kropotkin's  Mutual 
Aid  a  Factor  of  Evolution;  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science,  chap,  ix, 
sections  15  and  16. 

2  Grammar  of  Science,  ist  ed.,  p.  435. 


iv  LEARNING  BY  EXPERIENCE  85 

pioneers  of  that  science  were  correcting  that  one-sided  state- 
ment, and  even  abandoning  natural  selection  itself  as  the 
sole  principle  of  explanation. 

Biology,  finally,  with  its  fundamental  conception  of  evo- 
lution, has  emphasized  the  contrast  between  history,  as  the 
ground-character  of  the  living  being,  and  the  cycles  of 
merely  physical  change,  conceived  as  a  ceaseless  weaving  and 
unweaving,  of  which  no  memory  or  trace  remains  in  the  in- 
ner nature  of  the  things  which  undergo  it.  In  a  sense,  as 
Bergson  suggestively  points  out,  th£  world  of  physics  is  not 
in  time  at  all ;  real  duration  begins  with  life  and  that  organic 
memory  which  shows  itself  in  the  formation  of  habits. 
Changes,  for  the  living  being,  are  experiences  by  which  it 
learns,  by  which  .its  very  nature  is  moulded.  All  adaptation 
depends  on  this  capacity  of  learning,  and  the  capacity  is  ob- 
servable in  living  beings  at  a  very  low  stage.  Thus  in  the 
righting  reactions  of  the  star-fish,  the  initial  movement  of 
each  single  arm  is  determined  in  the  first  instance  separately 
by  external  stimuli  or  immediate  internal  conditions.  But  as 
soon  as  the  least  result  with  regard  to  righting  is  reached,  a 
unified  impulse  appears ;  the  actions  of  the  parts  are  co-ordi- 
nated, and  single  stimuli  are  disregarded.  For  a  living  being, 
therefore,  the  past  lives  on  as  a  vital  moment  in  the  present. 
Its  nature  at  any  given  moment  resumes,  as  it  were,  its  whole 
v  past  history ;  and  its  action  in  response  to  any  given  stimulus 
is  determined  not  only  by  the  present  stimulus  but,  to  an 
indefinitely  greater  extent,  by  its  own  accumulated  past. 
We  instinctively  feel  the  term  '  experience  '  to  be  out  of  place 
where  this  plasticity,  this  capacity  of  learning,  is  conceived 
to  be  absent.  On  such  experience  depends  the  possibility  of 
progress ;  and  whether  the  idea  of  progress  can  be  applied  in 
an  ultimate  reference  or  not,  it  is  certainly  the  only  idea 
which  brings  order  and  unity  into  our  human  world.  Here 
again,  therefore,  biology,  with  its  stress  on  the  concrete 
reality  of  time,  appears  in  the  true  line  of  advance. 


86  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  BIOLOGY  LECT. 

There  can,  at  least,  be  no  doubt  that  the  twentieth  century 
opens  with  a  very  remarkable  revival  of  general  interest  in 
philosophy;  and,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  it  is  not  the  least 
hopeful  sign  of  this  movement  that  the  impulse  has  come 
not  so  much  from  the  professional  philosophers  as  from  men 
of  science,  in  virtue  of  insights  reached  and  problems  raised 
in  the  progress  of  scientific  thought.  There  is,  doubtless,  as 
always  where  a  movement  spreads  to  wider  circles,  much 
crude  statement  and  wild  theorizing  by  philosophically  un- 
instructed  writers.  But  there  is  a  hopefulness  even  in  the 
determination  expressed  in  so  many  quarters  to  be  done 
with  academic  tradition,  and  to  discuss  the  universe  from 
its  foundations  entirely  without  prejudice.  There  is  a  new 
spirit  abroad  in  the  philosophical  world,  a  freshness  of  out- 
look, a  contagious  fervour,  a  sense  of  expectancy,  which 
riiave  long  been  absent  from  philosophical  writing.  The 
. -greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  was,  philosophically, 
a  period  of  reaction  and  criticism,  an  age  great  in  science 
and  in  history,  but  suspicious  of  philosophy,  distrustful  of 
her  syntheses,  too  occupied  for  the  most  part  with  its  own 
concrete  work  to  feel  the  need  of  them,  and  otherwise  prone 
to  take  refuge  in  positivism  or  agnosticism.  The  philosophy 
of  the  century  was  in  these  circumstances  mostly  in  a  minor 
key,  critical  and  historical  rather  than  creative,  reviewing 
its  own  past  and  demonstrating  the  necessity  of  its  own 
existence,  rather  than  directly  essaying  the  construction  of 
experience.  But  now  it  seems  as  if,  with  a  century's  accu- 
mulation of  fresh  material,  philosophy  were  girding  herself 
afresh  for  her  synthetic  task. 

I  have  tried  in  this  lecture  to  trace  the  liberating  influence 
of  biology  in  helping  to  bring  about  this  changed  attitude 
of  mind.  The  revolutionary  discoveries  in  physics  that  have 
marked  the  turn  of  the  century  have  also,  I  think,  by  the 
sense  of  new  horizons  which  they  have  given  us,  powerfully 
helped  to  mature  a  more  philosophical  view  of  the  nature 


iv  A  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIVAL  87 

and  function  of  physical  concepts  and  laws.  In  view  of  the 
sudden  transformation  which  has  overtaken  the  very  ele- 
ments of  the  old  physical  scheme,  there  has  been  reborn  the 
confidence  that  experience  is  richer  than  any  of  the  formulae 
in  which  we  may  have  sought  to  confine  it. 

Nay  come  up  hither.     From  this  wave-washed  mound 
Unto  the  furthest  flood-brim  look  with  me ; 
Then  reach  on  with  thy  thought  till  it  be  drowned. 
Miles  and  miles  distant  though  the  grey  line  be, 
And  though  thy  soul  sail  leagues  and  leagues  beyond, — 
Still,  leagues  beyond  those  leagues,  there  is  more  sea.1 

1  D.  G.  Rossetti,  sonnet  37, '  The  Choice.' 


LECTURE  V 
THE  LOWER  AND  THE  HIGHER  NATURALISM 

THE  term  Naturalism  shares  the  ambiguity  of  the  term 
nature,  from  which  it  is  derived.  A  life  'according  to 
nature '  meant  to  the  Stoics  that  pious  citizenship  of  the 
universe — the  life  of  human  brotherhood  and  cosmic  piety — 
in  which  they  saw  the  realization  of  the  highest  human 
ideal ;  to  the  Cynics  it  meant  casting  off  the  restraints  of  law 
and  custom,  and  even  discarding  the  ordinary  decencies  of 
civilized  humanity.  '  Back  to  nature,'  said  the  eighteenth- 
century  sentimentalist,  opposing  nature  to  civilization,  and 
glorifying  the  time  '  when  wild  in  woods  the  noble  savage 
ran '.  '  Back  to  nature,'  cries  Nietzsche,  in  his  .frenzied 
attack  on  all  accepted  morality  and  religion.  '  Morality  and 
religion  belong  entirely  to  the  psychology  of  error,'  '  every- 
thing good  is  instinct.'  The  task  of  the  philosophical  re- 
generator of  the  race  is  '  to  translate  man  back  again  into 
nature — to  make  legible  again  upon  the  palimpsest  the  ter- 
rible original  text,  homo  natura '.  On  the  whole,  it  may  be 
said,  although  the  term  need  carry  with  it  no  such  opposition 
or  exclusion,  that  the  tendency  of  usage  is  to  take  nature  as 
equivalent  to  non-human  or  infra-human  nature — the  uni- 
verse of  physical  forces  and  of  merely  animal  existence. 
Hence,  with  Nietzsche,  to  translate  man  back  again  into 
nature  means  to  brand  as  a  history  of  morbid  degeneration 
the  process  of  moralization  by  which  the  distinctively  hu- 
man being  has  been  created.  So  in  art  Naturalism  means 
the  accentuation  of  la  bctc  humainc.  And  in  philosophy, 
similarly,  Naturalism  has  come  to  mean  the  type  of  theory 
which  so  emphasizes  the  continuity  between  man  and  the 
non-human  nature  from  which  he  springs  as  to  minimize,  if 


v  MOTIVES  OF  NATURALISM  89 

not  entirely  to  deny,  any  difference  between  them,  _It 
denies,  at  any  rate,  any  central  significance  to  human  life  in 
the  play  of  the  cosmic  forces.1  Consciousness  is  an  inci- 
dent or  accident  of  the  universe,  which  does  not  throw  any 
special  illumination  upon  its  ultimate  nature.  It  arises  and 
passes  away;  the  physical  basis  of  things  remains.  ^Natu- 
ralism  is,  in  short,  a  larger,  and,  in  some  respects,  a  looser 
term  for  what  used  to  be  called  materialism. 

This  usage  is  general  in  the  best  authorities,  and  there  is 
no  reason  to  disturb  it,  seeing  that  it  designates  intelligibly 
one  great  trend  of  philosophical  theory  about  the  universe. 
But  one  can  sympathize  with  the  regretful  protest  of  the  late 
Professor  Wallace  against  this  degradation  of  an  inherently 
honourable  name.  '  The  faults  of  Naturalism  ',  he  says,2 
'  spring  from  a  creditable  motive.  It  is  the  desire  to  be 
honest,  to  say  only  what  you  can  prove,  to  require  thorough 
consistency  and  continuity  in  the  whole  realm  of  accepted 
truths.  .  .  .  Naturalism  was  a  reaction  from  the  follies  of 
supernaturalism.'  Indeed,  he  continues,  '  Naturalism  was 
at  the  outset  and  in  essence  a  negation  not  of  the  supernatu- 
ral in  general,  but  of  a  supernatural  conceived  as  incoherent, 
arbitrary,  and  chaotic ;  a  protest  against  a  conception  which 
separated  God  from  the  world  as  a  potter  from  his  clay, 
against  the  ignava  ratio  which  took  customary  sequences  as 
needing  no  explanation,  and  looked  for  special  revelation 
from  portents  and  wonders.'  Hence,  *  in  its  main  conten- 
tion ',  he  concludes,  '  Naturalism  was  sound ;  and  that  con- 
tention is,  as  expressed  in  the  old  phrase,  "  Non  fit  saltus  in 
natura."  ...  It  is  the  faith  of  science — the  human  faith — 
that  only  on  the  hypothesis  that  "  all's  reason  and  all's  law  " 

1  So  Renan,  in  his  last  phase,  is  reported  to  have  said  that  he  had 
attributed  to  man  too  central  a  part  in  the  universe,  and  that  the  de- 
velopment of  humanity  might  be  of  no  more  significance  than  a  growth 
of  moss  or  lichen. 

2  In  an  article  on  Mr.  Bal  four's  Foundations  of  Belief  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review,  April  1895,  partly  reproduced  in  his  posthumous  Lec- 
tures and  Essays. 


90      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM     LECT. 

shall  we  ever  understand — as  we  can  hope  to  understand — 
"  this  unintelligible  world  ".' 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  these  are  the  considerations 
to  which  Naturalism  owes  its  vitality.  It  represents  the 
victorious  claim  of  the  awakened  intelligence  to  explain  all 
events  and  existences  by  what  are  called  natural  causes — to 
view  them,  that  is  to  say,  as  steps  or  phases  in  one  orderly 
process  of  change — instead  of  having  recourse  at  any  point 
of  difficulty  to  the  direct  '  interference '  of  some  meta- 
physical agent  or  to  some  theory  of  special  creation.  The- 
ology has  itself,  in  great  measure,  abandoned  the  conception 
of  a  God  who  gives  evidence  of  his  existence  chiefly  by 
spasmodic  interferences  with  the  normal  course  of  events 
— who  lives,  as  it  has  been  said,  in  the  '  gaps  '  of  our  scien- 
tific knowledge,  and  whose  position,  therefore,  every  con- 
quest of  science  renders  more  precarious.  Such  a  conception 
has  no  place  in  philosophy,  whose  very  idea  is  law  or  system. 
The  continuity  of  nature's  processes,  so  strongly  insisted  on 
by  Naturalism,  may,  therefore,  be  regarded  by  a  sympathetic 
critic  as  simply  the  most  impressive  form  in  which  the  gen- 
eral idea  of  law  and  orderly  change  presents  itself  to  an 
age  predominantly  influenced  by  the  natural  sciences.  But 
continuity  is  as  much  the  interest  of  an  enlightened  philoso- 
phy as  it  can  be  of  any  scientific  worker.  It  is,  indeed,  the 
working  maxim  or  presupposition  of  every  attempt  to  sys- 
tematize our  knowledge.  If,  therefore,  an  idealistic  philoso- 
phy takes  exception  to  the  naturalistic  theory,  it  must  be, 
not  on  account  of  its  Naturalism  in  the  sense  just  explained, 
but  because  ordinary  Naturalism  takes  '  nature  '  in  an  un- 
duly narrow  sense,  and  is  dominated,  moreover,  by  an 
erroneous  idea  of  explanation  which  leads  to  a  denial  of 
real  differences  or  an  attempt  to  explain  them  away. 

This  constitutes  what  I  may  call  the  lower  Naturalism. 
A  charity  like  Professor  Wallace's  may  condone  its  excesses 
as  a  reaction  against  the  old  theological  idea  of  man  as 


v  LEVELLING  DOWN  91 

thrust  from  a  supernatural  sphere  into  material  surround- 
ings, which  are,  as  it  were,  accidental  to  his  real  being;  but 
its  procedure  is  none  the  less  fallacious,  and  its  conclusions 
unfounded.  The  separation  between  man  and  nature  may 
be  the  expression  initially,  as  has  been  suggested,  of  a 
dualistic  spiritualism  or  supernaturalism ;  but  the  natural- 
istic denial  of  this  separateness  or  foreignness  tends,  by 
way  of  reaction,  to  merge  man  altogether  in  that  infra- 
human  nature  from  which  it  declares  him  to  be  derived. 
Nature,  however,  is  not  the  less  nature  because  it  exhibits 
a  scale  of  qualitative  differences.  The_principle  of  con- 
tinuity  is  misinterpreted,  if  it  is  supposed  to  necessitate 
the  reduction  of  all  nature's  facts  to  the  dead  level  of  a 
single  type.  The  higher  Naturalism,  as  I  venture  to  call 
it,  J£dsj2o_j£mptation  to  this  levelling  down;  it  does  not  v 
hesitate  to  recognize  differences  where  it  sees  them,  without 
feeling  that  it  is  thereby  creating  an  absolute  chasm  between 
one  stage  of  nature's  processes  and  another — a  chasm 
which  can  only  be  cleared  by  supernatural  assistance 
expressly  invoked.  And  I  wish  to  point  out  that  this  greater 
freedom  of  attitude  is  largely  owing  to  its  truer  view  of 
what  is  meant  by  explanation,  and  where  and  in  what  sense 
explanation  is  possible. 

The  most  fundamental  differences  in  philosophical  inter- 
pretation may  be  shown  to  depend  on  the  view  that  is  taken 
of  the  nature  of  explanation.    .Explanation,  in  its  most  gen- 
eral sense,  means,  for  science,  the  statement  of  a  fact  in  its 
simplest  terms,  so  that  it  can  be  assimilated  to  other  facts 
and  included  as  a  case  of  what  we  call  a  general  law. 
In    Professor    Bain's  words,  '  mystery    means    isolation '. 
We  are  said  to  *  understand '  a  fact  when  we  are  able  to| 
regard  it  as  a  particular  example  of  a  mode  of  happen-l 
ing  already  known  to  us.    ^Explanation  also  means,  in  sci-? 
entific  usage,  a  statement  of  the  conditions  of  the  occur- 
rence of  any  fact.     Such  causal  explanation,  as  it  is  often 


92      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM     LECT. 

called,  consists  in  the  discovery  of  some  antecedent  set  of 
circumstances  on  which  the  given  phenomenon  follows  and 
on  which  it  appears  to  depend.  The  typical  attitude  of  the 

'scientific  investigator  is,  as  Professor  Lloyd  Morgan  puts 
it,1  'this  retrospective  outlook  towards  antecedent  condi- 
tions.' the  attempt  to  give  the  history  of  things,  and,  if  pos- 
sible, to  trace  them  back  to  their  beginnings.  Explanation 
in  this  sense  is  therefore  essentially  explanation  of  the  later 
by  the  earlier,  an  interpretation,  as  Spencer  puts  it,  of  '  the 
more  developed  by  the  less  developed  '.  But  it  is  important 
to  remember  that  such  explanation  professes  to  be  in  the 
end  no  more  than  a  description,  in  as  simple  and  general 
terms  as  possible,  of  the  way  in  which  things  happen,  or 
the  characteristic  ways  in  which  reality  behaves.  .Tl^gse 
ultimate  modes  of  behaviour  have  to  be  taken  for  granted, 
in  the  sense,  for  example,  that  the  law  of  gravitation  sum- 

.marizes  one  whole  range  of  phenomena,  '  but  no  one  knows 
why  two  ultimate  particles  influence  each  other's  motion.' a 
But  if  the  ultimate  modes  of  behaviour  have  thus  simply 
to  be  accepted  and  described,  a  serious  danger  may  lurk  in 
this  method  of  explaining  facts  exclusively  by  reference  to 
their  antecedents.  The  method  may  be  unimpeachable  in  a 
science  like  mechanics  or  molar  physics,  where  the  facts  with 
which  we  are  dealing  are  all  of  the  same  order — transforma- 
tions of  matter  and  motion.  Here  the  present  configuration 
of  the  facts  may  be  treated  without  danger  of  misconception 
as  the  mathematical  resultant  of  its  antecedents.  There  is 
equivalence  just  because  there  is  no  real  gain  in  the  process ; 
there  is  change,  but  no  advance,  nothing  new.  Everything 

1  In  his  little  volume,  The  Interpretation  of  Nature,  p.  9 
1  Karl  Pearson,  Grammar  of  Science,  p.  145  Hence,  Du  Bois-Rey- 
mond,  in  his  essays  emphasizing  the  limits  of  our  knowledge  of  nature 
(Die  Grenzen  des  Naturerkennens  and  Die  sieben  IVeltrdthsel),  treated 
the  nature  of  matter  and  force  as  the  first  of  the  world-riddles  before 
which  the  human  mind  is  condemned  to  stand  with  the  confession 
'  Ignoramus  et  Ignorabimus  '. 


v  THE  MEANING  OF  EXPLANATION  93 

remains  on  the  same  level.  But  in  the  biological  sciences, 
where  the  phenomenon  of  growth  is  fundamental,  and  in 
the  region  of  the  historical  generally — wherever,  in  short, 
there  is  a  real  evolution — the  question  at  once  arises  whether 
the  '  retrospective  '  method  of  explanation  does  not  in- 
advertently omit  from  its  account  of  causation  the  very 
feature  which  distinguishes  this  mode  of  change  from  the 
dead-level  equivalences  of  physics.  The  method  of  inter- 
preting the  more  developed  by  the  less  developed  is  logically 
tantamount  to  a  reduction  of  the  more  to  the  less,  and, 
therefore,  to  a  denial  of  the  very  fact  to  be  explained.  Or 
if  the  fact,  as  a  phenomenon,  is  beyond  dispute,  it  is  still 
robbed  of  its  significance  by  a  method  which  simply  refunds 
the  later  stage  into  the  earlier,  and  equates  the  outcome  of 
the  process  with  its  starting-point.  This  fallacy  is  plainly 
involved  in  the  method,  \vhen_we  pass  from  one  order  of 
facts  to  another,  say,  from  inorganic  nature  to  the  facts 
of  life,  or  from  animal  sentience  to  the  conceptual  reason 
and  self-consciousness  of  man.  Both  life  and  self-conscious- 
ness appear  to  emerge  from  antecedent  conditions  in  which 
these  distinctive  qualities  cannot  be  detected.  But  to 
insist  on  treating  them  as  no  more  than  the  inorganic  or 
non-rational  phenomena  which  form  their  antecedents  is 
not  a  legitimate  explanation,  in  the  genuine  scientific  sense  of 
reducing  a  fact  to  simpler  terms  and  thereby  bringing  it 
into  line  with  other  facts.  ,  The  simplification  is  effected  in 
this  case  by  a  process  of  abstraction  which  leaves  out  the 
characteristic  features  of  the  concrete  fact  supposed  to  be 
explained.  It  is  by  a  progressive  abstraction  of  this  kind, 
and  not  by  any  real  process  of  causal  explanation,  that  we 
arrive  at  such  a  formula  of  the  world-process  as  Spencer's 
re-distribution  of  matter  and  motion,  and  imagine  ourselves 
obliged  to  look  on  the  moving  particles  of  physical  science 
as  the  ultimate  reality  out  of  which  all  other  phenomena 
are  woven  by  cunning  complication. 


94      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM     LECT. 

This  fallacious  method  of  explanation  has  been  very 
strongly  pressed,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  case  of  life.  In 
the  sixties  and  seventies  of  last  century,  controversy  raged 
round  the  question  of  the  origin  of  life  from  the  non-living, 
and  then  and  later  the  ideal  of  the  majority  of  physiologists 
was  the  expression  of  organic  processes  in  physico-chemical 
terms.  The  extreme  unwillingness  to  recognize  in  vital 
phenomena  a  range  of  facts  with  distinctive  characteristics 
of  their  own  must  be  traced  to  the  idea  that  such  acknowl- 
edgement would  constitute  a  breach  in  the  continuity  of 
nature — would  be  equivalent,  in  fact,  to  the  admission  of 
special  metaphysical  causation  ab  extra,  to  account  for  the 
specific  characteristics  of  the  facts.  And,  to  be  sure,  ill- 
advised  theologians  found  great  comfort  in  the  apparent 
'  gap  ',  which,  they  urged,  manifestly  necessitated  an  act  of 
'  special  creation  '.  The  appearance  of  this  dans  f,r  winching 
increased  the  suspicion  of  the  Naturalists;  and  to  this  must 
be  added  the  difficulty  of  stating  what  has  been  called 
the  vitalistic  hypothesis  in  terms  which  shall  not  seem 
to  imply  an  extraneously-acting  directive  force.  But  with 
the  growth  of  a  calmer  temper  the  irreducible  difference 
between  vital  and  merely  physical  or  merely  chemical 
facts  has,  as  we  saw  in  the  preceding  lecture,  more  and 
more  impressed  itself  upon  unprejudiced  observers.  Per- 
haps the  most  striking  example  of  the  recognition  of  this 
difference  is  to  be  found  in  the  chapter  on  '  The  Dynamic 
Element  in  Life  ',  added  by  Spencer  himself  in  1898  to  the 
revised  edition  of  his  Principles  of  Biology,  and  containing 
the  frank  acknowledgement  that  *J:he  processes  which  go 
on  in  living  things  are  incomprehensible  as  results  of 
physical  actions  known  to  us.  ...  We  are  obliged  to  coji- 
fess  that  Life  in  its  essence  cannot  be  conceived  in  physico- 
chemical  terms.' 

This  transition  in  nature   from  one  order  of   facts  to 
another  had  already  been  stated  by  Mill  quite  simply  in 


v  '  CREATIVE  SYNTHESIS  '  95 

a  chapter  of  his  Logic,1  without  any  fuss  or  mystery  about 
it;  and  it  is  indeed  a  fact  which  stares  us  in  the  face  and 
forms  the  basis  of  the  hierarchy  of  the  sciences.  It  has, 
however,  an  important  philosophical  bearing,  and  the  idea 
of  '.creative  synthesis',  as  it  has  not  inaptly  been  called, 
has  played  a  considerable  part  in  recent  discussion.  The 
biological  term  'epigenesis  '  has  also  been  generalized  to 
express  the  same  idea  of  the  origin,  through  synthesis,  of 
features  of  experience  which  are  essentially  new.2  Such 
results  of  synthesis  occur  not  only  at  points  which  mark  the 
transition  from  one  science  to  another ;  they  are  exemplified 
in  such  simple  experiences  as  melody  and  harmony  resulting 
from  the  combination  of  musical  notes.  So  Browning  finely 
celebrates  the  musician's  power  as  lying  in  this : 

That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frames,  not  a  fourth  sound, 
but  a  star. 

1  Book  III,  chap,  vi,  '  On  the  Composition  of  Causes.'    '  All  organized 
bodies  are  composed  of   parts   similar  to   those  composing  inorganic 
nature,  and  which  have  even  themselves  existed  in  an  inorganic  state ; 
but  the  phenomena  of  life  which  result  from  the  juxtaposition  of  these 
parts  in  a  certain  manner  bear  no  analogy  to  any  of  the  effects  which 
would  be  produced  by  the  action  of  the  component  substances  considered 
as  mere  physical  agents.'     Hence  each  science  possesses  a  relative  inde- 
pendence in  respect  of  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  phenomena  with  which 
it  deals:  '  TJie  Laws  of  Life  will  never  be  deducible  from  the  mere 
laws  of  the  ingredients,  but  the  prodigiously  complex   Facts  of  Life 
may  all  be  deducible  from  comparatively  simple  laws  of  life.' 

2  Epigenesis  or  creative  synthesis  in  the  sense  indicated  does  not  neces- 
sarily  imply,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  pluralism  and  contingency  with 
which  Professor  Ward  identifies,  or  at  least  associates,  it.     (Cf.  The 
Realm  of  Ends,  pp.  98  and  270 :  '  To  the  pluralist  the  so-called  evolu- 
tion of  the  world   is   really  epigenesis,  creative   synthesis;   it  implies 
continual  new  beginnings,  the  result  of  the  mutual  conflict  and  co-opera- 
tion of  agents,  all  of  whom,  though  in  varying  degrees,  act  spontaneously 
or  freely.'     'Here  all  is  history,  the  result  of  effort,  trial  and  error; 
here  we  have   adventure  and  ultimate  achievement.')      Pluralism,   so 
understood,  may,  no  doubt,  be  more  easily  worked  into  a  theory  of 
epigenesis  than  into  the  opposite  theory  of  preformation,  with  which, 
indeed,  it  is  flatly  irreconcilable.     But  the  idea  of  epigenesis  itself,  it 
seems  to  me,  would  be  equally  applicable  to  the  process  of  experience, 
if  that  process  were  conceived  as  the  progressive  self-revelation  of  an 
absolute  being.    The  use  of  the  term  does  not,  therefore,  decide  the 
issue  which  Pluralism  raises. 


96      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM     LECT. 

And  if  the  appearance  of  life  is  the  most  impressive  instance 
of  a  synthesis  which  refuses  to  be  analysed  into  its  apparent 
antecedents,  yet  men  of  science,  fighting  for  the  idea  of  the 
continuity  of  nature  against  the  theological  doctrine  of 
special  creation,  were  not  altogether  wrong  in  the  stress 
they  laid  on  the  phenomenon  of  crystallization  as  similarly 
inexplicable — if  that  is  the  right  word  to  employ  in  either 
case — by  the  unguided  forces  of  gravity  and  cohesion. 
There  are,  of  course,  important  differences  between  the 
two  cases,  and  there  is  the  further  difference  that  matter 
is  constantly  passing  from  a  non-crystalline  to  a  crystalline 
structure,  and  the  experimenter  can  easily  bring  about  the 
transition  by  arranging  appropriate  conditions,  whereas,  in 
the  case  of  life,  no  instance  can  be  shown  in  nature  of 
the  production  of  the  living  from  the  non-living,  and  the 
problem  has  hitherto  equally  baffled  the  experimenter. 
In  the  early  days  of  Darwinism,  the  more  enthusiastic 
spirits  believed  that  they  were  on  the  eve  of  obtaining,  if 
they  had  not  already  obtained,  evidence  of  such  transition. 
But  it  was  a  case  of  the  wish  being  father  to  the  thought, 
and  more  careful  analysis  has  always  left  things  just  where 
they  were.  The  attempt  to  '  catch  nature  half-in  and  half- 
out  ',  as  Hutchison  Stirling  graphically  put  it,  has  invari- 
ably failed,  and  the  question  of  xabiogenesis  has  latterly 
fallen  into  the  background.1  I  cannot  myself  believe  that 
it  is  of  any  philosophical  importance.  >,.The  philosophical 
question  is  the  difference  of  nature  between  the  two  orders 
of  fact,  not  the  question  of  historical  emergence — how  or 
when  the  one  arose  from  the  other  or  came  to  be  added  to 
it..  Even  if  we  were  able  to  show  a  debatable  land  between 
the  organic  and  the  inorganic,  as  we  can  between  the  animal 
and  the  vegetable  kingdoms,  and  to-point  to  objects  which 
might  be  classed  almost  indifferently  as  the  one  or  the 

1  Although  it  was  revived  by  Professor  (Sir  Edward)  Schafer  in  his 
presidential  address  to  the  British  Association  in  1912. 


v  QUESTIONS  OF  ORIGIN  97 

other,  even  then  the  existence  of  such  intermediate  or  transi- 
tional forms  would  not  obscure  the  fact  that  we  do  pass  to 
a  new  plane  or  level  of  existence,  qualitatively  different  and, 
through  that  difference,  opening  up  a  new  range  of  possi- 
bilities to  the  creatures  which  it  includes. 

Philosophy  is  not  interested,  therefore,   in  speculations 
like  those  of  Lord  Kelvin  as  to  the  origin  of  life  upon  our 
globe  from  germs  carried  to  it  by  meteorites  from  other 
parts  of  space.     This  slightly  grotesque  hypothesis  would 
at  best  only  throw  the  difficulty  a  little  farther  back;  and, 
after  all,  if  we  are  not  to  think  in  quite  primitive  terms  of 
a  creator,  at  some  point  in  the  history  of  this  globe  or  of 
other  globes,  manufacturing  the  first  cells,  as  it  were  with 
hands,  what  other  view  can  we  take,  so  long  as  we  think 
in  terms  of  time-sequence,   than  that  somewhere  and  at 
some  time,  under  a  convergence  of  appropriate  conditions, 
life   supervened   upon  a  hitherto   inorganic  nature?     But 
the  fact  that  science  finds  absolute  origination  an  insoluble 
problem  in  every  department   of   investigation   should   at 
least   suggest   to   us   as   philosophers   that   there   must   be 
something  wrong  with  this  whole  method  of  attacking  the 
subject.     To  the  great  philosophers  this  aspect  of  time- 
succession  has  seemed  in  the  main  irrelevant.     In  the  well- 
worn  phrase,  philosophy  contemplates  the  world  sub  quadam 
^specie  aeternitatis.     There  may  be  a  sense  in  which  to  do 
this  is  to  avert  one's  gaze  from  the  concrete  world  and  to 
embrace  an  abstraction  in  its   stead.     But  in   its  present 
application  the  phrase  means  that  what  philosophy  primarily 
_  seeks  to  exhibit  is  the  character  or  essential  structure  of  the 
universe,  and  that  that  character  can  only  be  held  to  be  given, 
when  we  keep  in  view  the  whole  range  of  its  manifestations,, 
wand  relate  these  manifestations  to  one  another  according 
to   their   intrinsic   nature — which   may   prove   to   be   also 
ka  relation  according  to  a  scale  of  value  or  worth.    But  the 
intrinsic  nature  and  the  value  of  any  phase  are  not  altered 


98      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM     LECT. 

in  the  least  by  its  appearance  sooner  or  later  in  a  particular 
time-series;  and  therefore  the  latter  question  is  strictly 
indifferent  to  philosophy,  which  is  interested  in  the  phase 
simply  as  a  revelation,  so  far  forth,  of  the  real  nature  of 
the  world,  and  thus  an  element  helping  to  determine  the 
final  answer  which  it  seeks. 

We  need  have  no  difficulty,  therefore,  in  agreeing  with 
Professor  Lloyd  Morgan  *  when  he  repudiates  as  unphilo- 
sophical  the  idea  of  ^a  supernatural  hiatus_  bet  ween  the 
inorganic  and  the  organic  ',  and  combats  the  conception  of 
Vital  Force  as  '  something  outside  the  recognized  course 
of  nature ',  introduced  to  bridge  this  particular  chasm  and 
account  for  the  peculiarities  of  the  new  order  of  phenomena. 
But  if  Vitalism  means  simply  that  'living  matter  has  cer- 
tain distinctive  properties';  if  we  use  the  term  vital  in 
a  descriptive  rather  than  a  causal  sense  to  denote  a  pecu- 
liarity of  behaviour  '  which  is  found  nowhere  else  in  nature  ', 
and  which  we  cannot  assert  is  '  anywhere  foreshadowed  in 
the  inorganic  sphere  ',  then  no  objection,  he  allows,  can  be 
taken  to  the  term.  But  in  principle,  he  urges,  the  term  Vital 
Force  is,  in  that  case,  on  the  same  footing  as  gravitative 
force,  chemical  force,  crystalline  force  and  similar  terms; 
for  '  no  one  has  yet  been  able  to  show  how  certain  observed 
modes  of  attraction  can  be  developed  out  of  others.  .  .  . 
A  candid  and  impartial  inquiry  into  the  facts  enables  us 
to  realize  that  under  these  or  those  assignable  conditions 
new  modes  of  attraction  supervene — modes  which  with 
our  present  knowledge  no  one  could  have  foretold,  since  in 
science  it  must  not  infrequently  suffice  to  be  wise  after  the 
event.'  Hence,  he  concludes,  we  must  generalize  our 
position,  and  if  we  speak  of  '  forces  '  in  connexion  with  these 
different  groups  of  phenomena,  they  must  all  alike  be 
regarded,  not  as  implying  at  any  point  what  has  been  called 

1  In  his  articles  on  '  Biology  and  Metaphysics '  and  '  Vitalism '  in 
The  Monist,  vol.  ix  (January  and  July  1899). 


v  IMMANENCE  AND  CONTINUITY  99 

'  an  alien  influx  into  nature  ',  but  as  '  differential  modes 
of  manifestation  of  the  self-existent  Cause  '. 

Professor  Lloyd  Morgan  expresses  his  conclusions  much 
in  the  same  terms  as  Spencer  (to  whose  new  chapter  in  the 
Principles  of  Biology  he  refers),  and  one  might  easily  crit- 
icize his  conception  of  the  relation  of  science  and  meta- 
physics as  dealing  respectively  with  '  the  realities  of  experi- 
ence '  and  '  the  sphere  of  noumenal  existence '.  His 
phraseology  is  also  occasionally  grudging  in  its  seeming 
unwillingness  to  recognize  the  relatively  greater  step  from 
the  non-living  to  the  living  than  from  any  one  phase  of  in- 
organic nature  to  another.  But,  in  principle,  I  take  his  con- 
tention to  be  sound  on  the  two  points  of  immanence  and 
continuity.  The  argument  which  he  presents  from  the 
"scientinc  side  is,  indeed,  essentially  the  same  as  that  pre- 
sented from  the  metaphysical  side  by  Professor  Bosanquet 
in  his  recent  volume  of  Gifford  Lectures.  In  his  chapter  on 
'  The  Bodily  Basis  of  Mind  ',  Professor  Bosanquet  does  not 
hesitate  to  apply  the  same  principle  to  the  perhaps  still  more 
crucial  case  of  the  appearance  of  consciousness  and  the  gen- 
esis of  souls.  '  We  may  smile  ',  he  says,  '  at  the  simplicity  of 
the  materialist  who  could  explain  consciousness  as  an  effect 
of  material  combination  ' ;  yet  it  is  important  '  to  empha- 
size the  idea  of  a  being  essentially  connected  with  or  even 
founded  upon  its  environment  (past  as  well  as  present),  to 
which,  nevertheless,  or  out  of  which,  it  brings  a  principle  of 
unity.  .  .  .  Instead  of  a  self-subsistent  eternal  angelic  being, 
we  should  thus  be  led  to  conceive  of  the  soul  as — to  adapt 
a  phrase  of  Lotze — a  perfection  granted  by  the  Absolute 
according  to  general  laws,  upon  certain  complex  occasions 
and  arrangements  of  externality.  .  .  .  And  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that,  in  the  end,  this  being  granted  by  the  Absolute 
upon  a  certain  combination  is  all  that  any  connexion,  any 
form  of  causation  or  inherence  can  mean.'  In  such  a  view, 
he  claims,  '  there  is  nothing  whatever  materialistic  or 


ioo      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM   LECT. 

unspiritual,'  since  '  in  apparent  cosmic  development,  whether 
inorganic,  organic,  or  logical,  the  rule  is  for  the  stream  to 
rise  higher  than  its  source  V 

Let  me  take  one  more  example  of  what  I  mean  by  the 
transition  from  one  order  of  facts  to  another,  or  from  one 
plane  of  experience  to  another— the  passage  from  the  merely 
animal  life  of  semi-passive  perception  and  association  to 
the  distinctively  human  level  of  the  active  conceptual 
reason.  '  The  having  of  general  ideas  ',  says  Locke  in  a  well- 
known  passage,  '  is  that  which  puts  a  perfect  distinction 
betwixt  man  and  brutes,  and  is  an  excellency  which  the 
faculties  of  brutes  do  by  no  means  attain  to.' 2  This  is  just 
the  kind  of  passage  which  the  average  evolutionist  with 
a  negative  bias  in  his  thinking  is  apt  to  set  down  as  a  piece 
of  antiquated  theological  prejudice.  If  evolution  has  proved 
anything,  has  it  not  proved  that  there  is  no  such  qualitative 
distinction  between  human  reason  and  the  lower  ranges 
of  animal  intelligence?  The  whole  thing  is  a  question  of 
degree — of  advance  by  insensible  gradations,  with  nowhere 
any  hint  of  a  difference  in  kind.  So,  in  familiar  accents, 
one  can  hear  the  indignant  protest.  And  yet  how  absolutely 
true  to  the  facts  is  Locke's  honest  report.  He  is  talking, 
in  the  same  context,  of  the  comparison  of  our  ideas  one 
with  another,  and  this  is  what  he  says :  '  How  far  brutes 
partake  in  this  faculty  is  not  easy  to  determine.  I  imagine 
they  have  it  not  in  any  great  degree :  for  though  they 
probably  have  several  ideas  distinct  enough,  yet  it  seems 
to  me  to  be  the  prerogative  of  human  understanding,  when 
it  has  sufficiently  distinguished  any  ideas,  so  as  to  perceive 
them  to  be  perfectly  different,  .  .  .  to  caqt  qbout  pnd  consider 
in  -illicit  ci re K instances  tliey  are  capable  to  be  compared,  and 
therefore,  I  think,  beasts  compare  not  their  ideas  further 
than  some  sensible  circumstances  annexed  to  the  objects 

1  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  189-91. 
'  Essay,  II.  n.  10. 


v  PLANES  OF  EXPERIENCE  101 

themselves.  The  other  power  of  comparing,  which  may  be 
observed  in  men,  belonging  to  general  ideas,  and  useful 
only  to  abstract  reasonings,  we  may  probably  conjecture 
beasts  have  not.'  1  An  animal,  that  is  to  say,  perceives 
objects,  and  of  course  it  is  aware  of  differences  between  the 
objects  it  perceives :  it  distinguishes  one  object  from 
another.  But  the  whole  process  is  semi-passive;  the 
differences  impress  themselves  upon  the  mind  as  upon 
some  sensitive  plate.  Differences  and  resemblances  between 
objects  are  sensed  or  felt  as  part  of  the  total  unanalysed 
perception  of  the  objects.  The  feeling  of  the  differences  or 
resemblances  is  sufficient  to  determine  the  animal's  action 
this  way  or  that;  but  it  does  not  drive  him,  as  it  may  drive 
a  man,  '  to  cast  about ',  as  Locke  says,  '  and  consider  in 
what  circumstances  '  the  objects  differ  from  or  resemble  one 
another.  By  this  deliberate  active  comparison  we  define 
to  ourselves  the  precise  points  of  agreement  or  difference — 
we  isolate  them  from  the  general  context  of  the  objects  as 
sensed  or  perceived — we  frame,  in  fact,  a  concept,  a  general 
or  abstract  idea.  In  this  power  of  abstraction  or,  as  we 
now  more  commonly  say,  in  the  conceptual  reason — in  the 
grasping  by  the  mind  of  an  idea  which  does  not  exist  as  an 
object  of  sense  at  all — Locke  rightly  saw  the  differentia  of 
human  intelligence,  and  he  was  also  right  ,in  connecting 
with  it  the  use  of  words  as  general  signs. 

Apply  this  to  the  idea  of  causal  connexion  which  lies  at 
Jhe  basis  of  our  scientific  knowledge.  Hume  explains  this 
idea  as  a  habit  of  expectation  generated  by  the  repeated 
sequence  of  two  events  in  the  past.  Now  that  is  exactly 
the  length  we  may  suppose  the  animal  mind  to  go — auto- 
matic association  of  two  events  through  their  repeated 
conjunction  in  the  past — and  you  can  guide  a  whole  life 
by  the  habits  of  expectation  thus  generated.  And  yet  the 
animal  does  not  possess  the  idea  of  cause  in  the  strict  sense 

1II.  ii.  5. 


102      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM   LECT. 

at  all — the  general  idea  of  connectedness  or  the  dependence 
of  one  event  upon  another.  To  realize  that  idea  is  to  form 
the  first  conception  of  an  independent  world — an  inde- 
pendent system  of  definitely  connected  facts.  It  contains 
in  itself  all  the  potentialities  of  science;  and  the  birth  of. 
.reason  in  the  individual,  if  we  may  so  speak,  .is  just  the 


moment  when  repeated  conjunctions  suggest  to  the  mind 
this  idea  of  the  connectedness,  the  interdependence,  of  the 
two  phenomena.  To  the  mind  that  remains  on  the  animal 
plane,  frequent  repetition  produces  a  firm  association 
between  two  facts,  firm  habits  of  expectation;  but  if  the 
customary  sequence  should  be  interfered  with,  if  expecta- 
tion should  be  baulked,  that  will  mean  only  a  feeling  of 
discomfort;  and  if  such  disappointments  occur  frequently, 
the  automatically  generated  habit  of  expectation  will  as 
automatically  tend  to  disappear.  To  the  incipient  human 
intelligence,  on  the  contrary — to  the  mind  that  has  once 
grasped  the  general  idea  of  causal  dependence — the  non- 
occurrence  of  an  expected  effect  sets  the  mind  at  once  ac- 
tively to  work,  to  find  out  the  reason  of  the  non-occurrence, 
to  find  out  what  counteracting  cause  has  been  present  to 
defeat  expectation  in  this  particular  case.  Obviously  these 
two  minds  move  on  quite  different  levels. 

But  here  again  there  is  no  need  to  entangle  ourselves  in 
the  vexed  question  as  to  where  precisely  association  ends 
and  reason  begins — as  to  whether  there  may  not  be  instances 
of  conscious  process  in  the  lower  animals  which  deserve 
the  name  of  reason  in  the  full  sense.  The  animal  mind  and 
the  human  mind,  as  I  have  used  the  terms,  are  to  be  taken 
as  types,  ideal  stages  of  mental  development.  Nor  need 
one  minimize  in  the  least  the  continuity  of  the  process  by 
which  the  one  seems  to  pass,  almost  at  a  touch,  into  the 
other.  But  it  is  a  case  of  '  the  little  more  and  how  much 
it  is,  and  the  little  less  and  what  worlds  away  '.  To  cross 
this  ideal  line  means  to  reach  the  notion  of  objectivity  and 


v  CONTINUITY  AND  '  BREAKS  '  103 

truth  on  which  science  is  built;  it  means  morality,  art 
and  religion,  and  all  the  possibilities  of  human  history. 
Can  anything  be  more  futile,  then,  than  to  ignore  the 
qualitative  distinction  between  the  one  range  of  mind  and 
the  other?  When  the  dog  develops  a  system  of  astronomy 
or  the  cow  pauses  on  the  hill-top  to  admire  the  view,  we 
shall  gladly  welcome  them  to  the  logician's  company  of 
'  rational  animals  ' ;  but,  till  then,  the  wise  man  will  be 
content  to  recognize  a  difference  which  is  real. 

Continuity  of  process  and  the  emergence  of  real  differ- 
ences— these  are,  in  short,  the  twin  aspects  of  the  cosmic  his- 

. 
tory,  and  it  is  essential  to  clear  thinking  that  the  one  be  not 

allowed  to  obscure  the  other.  And  whereas,  formerly,  the 
magnitude  of  the  differences  led  to  static  or  typical  con- 
ceptions of  separate  species  and  (as  in  our  last  instance 
of  the  human  and  animal  mind)  to  the  assertion  of  a 
sheer  discontinuity  between  the  one  stage  and  the  other,  so 
more  recently  the  evolutional  study  of  intervening  forms 
and  the  accumulation  of  minute  differences  has  made  us 
realize  so  vividly  the  extremely  gradual  steps  by  which 
nature  engineers  her  advances  that,  as  Professor  Ward  puts 
it,  '  we  are  inclined  to  imagine  either  that  there  is  no  problem 
at  all,  or  that,  if  there  is,  the  problem  is  solved  V  Or  in 
the  words  of  Hume,  which  he  aptly  impresses  into  his 
service,  '  the  passage  is  so  smooth  and  easy  that  it  produces 
little  alteration  in  the  mind.  The  thought  glides  along  the 
succession  with  equal  facility,  as  if  it  considered  only  one 
object,  and  therefore  confounds  the  succession  with  the 
identity.'  Continuity  may  be  inconsistent  with  '  breaks  ', 
if  we  define  a  '  break  '  as  a  '  chasm  '  or  '  an  alien  influx  into 
nature '.  But  if  we  take  the  facts  as  they  stand,  without 
importing  a  theory  into  the  word,  we  may  say  with  the 
late  Professor  Wallace  that  ^all  development  is  by  breaks 

1  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  ist  ed.,  vol.  i,  p.  260. 


104     LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM    LECT. 

and  yet  makes  for  continuity  V  But  the  word,  so  used, 
will  mean  simply  the  ackiinwli'd^cnicnt  of  what  1  have 
called  ..the  emergence  of  real  differences  in  the  course  of 
the  process — actual  '  increments  '  or  '  lifts  '  in  the  process, 
where  quantity  may  be  said  to  pass  into  quality,  difference 
of  degree  into  difference  of  kind.  Such  crises,  as  it  has 
been  well  said,2  are  '  greater  in  their  implications  than  in 
the  actual  moment';  they  are  points  after  which  every- 
thing seems  to  '  move  in  a  new  dimension  '.  But  it  is 
neither  necessary,  nor  is  it  possible,  to  fix  such  points  as 
definite  dates  in  an  historical  sequence.  The  very  nature 
of  time  forbids  the  translation  of  philosophical  analysis  into 
literal  history. 

It  is  instructive  to  note  that  allthe^wgrid^i^dles '  of 
Du  Bois-Reymond's  once  famous  book,3  or  all  at  least  after 
the  first,  concern  the  origin  of  the  differences  or  increments 
which  mark  the  successive  steps  of  the  evolutionary  process. 
After  the  first  incomprehensibility  of  the  nature  of  matter 
>  and  force4  comes  the^prigin  of  movement,  then  the  origin 
of  life  and  what  appears  to  be  purposive  adaptation,  then 
the  origin  of  sentience,  and  finally  the  origin  of  rational  con- 
sciousness and  will.  Each  transition  is  one  of  the  eternal 
'  limits  '  set  to  our  knowledge  of  nature,  in  regard  to  which 
the  confession  of  Science  must  be  a  perpetual  '  Ignorabi- 
mus  '.  As  he  puts  it  in  one  of  the  instances,  '  it  is  not  merely 
the  case  that,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  con- 
sciousness is  inexplicable  from  its  natural  conditions,  but  in 

1  Prolegomena  to  Hegel's  Logic,  second  edition,  p.  476.   '  The  reader 
of  the  Divina  Commedia',  Professor  Wallace  finely  says,  'may  hardly 
need  to  be  reminded  that,  at  each  of  the  grander  changes  of  scene  and 
grade  in  his  pilgrimage,  Dante  suddenly  finds  himself  without  obvious 
means  transported  into  a  new  region  of  experience.    There  are  catas- 
trophes in  the  process  of  development:  not  unprepared,  but  summing  up, 
as  in  a  flash  of  insight,  the  gradual  and  unperceived  process  of  growth." 

2  Professor  J.  Y.  Simpson's  Spiritual  Interpretation  of  Nature,  p.  131. 
'  Die  sieben  Weltrdthsel,  published  in  1880. 

*  Already  referred  to  on  p.  92. 


v  TYNDALL'S  BELFAST  ADDRESS  105 

the  nature  of  things  it  never  can  be  explicable  from  these 
conditions.'  Inexplicable,  certainly,  we  might  reply,  from 
these  conditions,  if  they  are  substantiated  as  self-existent  in 
their  purely  physical  aspect.  Each  new  fact  in  turn  must  be 
sheerly  unintelligible  if  we  take  our  stand  at  the  stage  below, 
and  if,  in  the  last  resort,  we  treat  '  the  mechanics  of  the 
atom  '  as  the  ultimately  self-existing  fact,  out  of  which 
everything  else  is  somehow  to  be  conjured  and  so  explained. 
And,  in  spite  of  his  criticism  of  the  atoms  as  philosophical 
fictions,  Du  Bois-Reymond  is  still  dominated  by  the  concep- 
tion of  matter,  defined  by  its  purely  physical  qualities,  as  the 
independently  real  substructure  of  phenomena. 

It  was  this,  too,  that  lent  the  sting  to  Tyndall's  celebrated 
statement,  in  his  Belfast  Address  of  1874,  that  he  felt  com- 
pelled by  an  intellectual  necessity  to  discern  in  matter  '„ 
promise  and  potency  of  all  terrestrial  Life  '.  When  we  look 
back  upon  the  passage  and  read  it  in  its  context,  with  its 
quotations  from  Lucretius  and  _Bruno — when  we  note  the 
use  of  the  vague  term  '  nature  ',  the  reference  to  '  latent 
powers  ',  and  the  insistence  on  the  continuity  of  nature  as 
the  chief  point  of  the  contention — the  position  appears 
neither  so  dangerous  nor  so  unphilosophical  as  it  did  to 
those  who  first  heard  it.  It  appeared  to  them,  in  the  con- 
troversial language  of  the  day,  '  material  atheism  ',  because 
they  understood  by  matter  the  matter  of  the  physicist  as  a 
prior  self-existing  fact.  And  that  is  the  danger  and,  one 
may  still  say,  the  falsity  which  lurks  in  Tyndall's  way  of 
putting  the  truth  he  intends.  If  we  take  matter  in  anything 
like  its  accepted  meaning,  then  our  attempted  explanation 
breaks  down  at  every  successive  stage  in  the  evolutionary 
process;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  endow  matter  with 
'  the  promise  and  potency '  of  all  that  eventually  crowns 
the  process,  the  word  loses  all  definite  meaning.  Con- 
temporary critics  did  not  fail  to  point  out  that  Tyndall's 
matter,  in  virtue  of  the  powers  attributed  to  it,  was  really 


io6      LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM  LECT. 

indistinguishable  from  spirit,  or,  as  Coleridge  said  in  a 
similar  connexion,  'ja  something-nothing-everything  which 
does  all  of  which  we  know  V  It  becomes,  indeed,  simply 
the  notion  of  potentiality  as  such — perhaps  the  most 
slippery  term  in  the  whole  vocabulary  of  philosophy.  If 
it  is  the  complete  or  final  fact  which  we  wish  to  explain, 
and  if,  as  we  have  seen,  explanation  can  only  mean  accu- 
rate description  or  analysis  of  the  nature  of  the  fact,  it  is 
clear  that  it  can  serve  no  useful  purpose — it  must,  indeed, 
be  fundamentally  misleading — to  say  that  characteristics 
which,  according  to  the  very  meaning  of  the  terms,  are  not 
exhibited  by  the  atoms  and  molecules  of  the  physicist,  are 
potentially  present  in  these  particles  as  such.  To  insist  in 
this  way  on  regarding  the  later  stages  as  existing  pre- 
formed, so  to  speak,  in  the  bare  beginning  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  ignore  the  true  nature  of  the  evolution-process,  as 
characterized  by  the  emergence  of  real  differences  and  the 
attainment  of  results  which  transcend  the  apparent  starting- 
point.  .It  is  only  in  so  far  as  we  connect  the  physical  with 
the  vital  and  the  conscious,  as  stages  of  a  single  process, 
that  we  can  speak,  with  even  a  show  of  intelligibility,  of  the 
physical  as  containing  the  potentiality  of  all  that  is  to  follow. 
JThe  philosophical  meaning  of  potentiality  is,  in  short,  simply 
the  insight  that,  in  the  interpretation  of  any  process,  it  is 
the  process  as  a  whole  that  has  to  be  considered,  if  we  wish 
Jto  know  the  nature  of  the  reality  revealed  in  it.  In  other 
words,  every  evolutionary  process  must  be  read  in  the  light 
of  its  last  term.  This  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  profound 
Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  Telns  or  End  as  the  ultimate 
principle  of  explanation.  As  I  have  put  it  on  a  previous 
occasion — '  All  explanation  of  the  higher  by  the  lower 
is  philosophically  a  hysteron-proteron.  The  antecedents 
assigned  are  not  the  causes  of  the  consequents,  for  by 
antecedents  the  naturalistic  theories  mean  the  antecedents 

1  Biographia  Literaria,  chap.  vii. 


v  MEANING  OF  POTENTIALITY  107 

in  abstraction  from  their  consequents — the  antecedents 
taken  as  they  appear  in  themselves,  or  as  we  might  suppose 
them  to  be  if  no  such  consequents  had  ever  issued  from 
them.  So  conceived,  however,  the  antecedents  (matter 
and  energy,  for  example),  have  no  real  existence — they  are 
mere  entia  ratioms,  abstract  aspects  of  the  one  concrete 
fact  which  we  call  the  universe.  .  .  .  All  ultimate  or  philo- 
sophical explanation  must  look  to  the  end.  ...  If  we  are 
in  earnest  with  the  doctrine  that  the  universe  is  one,  we 
have  to  read  back  the  nature  of  the  latest  consequent  into 
the  remotest  antecedent.  Only  then  is  the  one,  in  any  true 
sense,  the  cause  of  the  other.' x 

It  is  worth  observing  that  the  same  apparently  inveter- 
ate tendency  to  obliterate  the  distinctions  between  different 
ranges  of  experience  may  be  seen  asserting  itself  afresh  in 
the  relation  of  biology  to  psychology  and  sociology.  Just 
as  the  long-established  ascendancy  of  physical  science  has 
hindered  the  recognition  of  the  autonomy  of  the  science 
of  life,  imposing  upon  the  biologist  a  foreign  ideal,  as  if 
physical  conceptions  alone  were  ultimately  valid — their 
de  facto  inadequacy  in  dealing  with  vital  phenomena  being 
attributed  not  to  the  characteristics  of  the  subject-matter 
but  to  the  biologist's  (so  far)  imperfect  analysis — in  a 
similar  fashion  the  prestige  of  biology  has  led  within  recent 
years  to  the  wholesale  application  of  biological  concep- 
tions and  theories  to  the  facts  of  mind  and  society.  I  do 
not  wish  to  deny — I  would,  on  the  contrary,  emphasize — 
the  stimulus  which  psychology  and  sociology,  as  well  as 
general  philosophy,  have  derived  from  contact  with  the 
great  biological  movement  of  the  last  half-century.  The 
biological  analogies  and  metaphors  are,  in  general,  far  more 
instructive  than  the  physical  conceptions  which  they  re- 
placed, and  the  restatement  has  made  many  phases  of 
mental  development  more  intelligible.  But  here  again 
1  Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos,  pp.  11-12. 


108     LOWER  AND  HIGHER  NATURALISM    LECT. 

autonomy  must  be  respected.  ^Consciousness  brings  into 
view  a  new  range  of  facts  and  values;  and  to  suppose  that 
biological  categories  can  be  more  than  suggestive  analogies 
in  the  new  sphere  is  once  again  to  obliterate  the  distinctive* 
characteristics  of  the  facts  which  it  is  sought  to  describe. 
Loose  talk  about  natural  selection  and  the  social  organism 
will  not  solve  the  problems  either  of  mental  or  of  social 
science.  A  new  order  of  facts  demands  its  own  conceptions 
in  terms  of  which  it  may  be  described  and  systematized.1 

From  the  philosophical  point  of  view,  therefore,  explana- 
tion is  essentially  an  affair  of  categories.  ^  (Correct  explana- 
tion depends  in  any  department  on  the  employment  of 
appropriate  categories,  and  philosophy  consists  in  an  ir> 
sight  into  the  relation  of  the  categories  in  question  and  the 
realm  of  facts  which  they  describe,  to  other  categories  and 
Bother  realms  or  aspects  of  reality.  We  must  have  some 
notion  of  their  significance  in  an  account  of  the  nature  of 
the  universe  as  a  whole.  The  function  of  philosophy  is,  in 
this  connexion,  comparable  to  that  of  a  '  Warden  of  the 
Marches  '  between  the  various  sciences,  resisting  the  preten- 
sions of  any  particular  science  to  be  the  exclusive  exponent 
of  reality  and  assigning  to  each  its  hierarchical  rank  in 
a  complete  scheme  of  knowledge.  For  if,  as  men  of 
science  tell  us,  scientific  explanation  is  in  the  end  descrip- 
tion, the  same  is  ultimately  true  of  philosophy  itself. 
Philosophy,  or  perhaps  I  should  qualify  the  statement 
and  say,  sa,ne  philosophy,  is  not  really  the  quest  of  some 
transcendent  reason  why  the  nature  of  things  is  as  it  is; 
it  does  not  attempt,  in  Lotze's  phrase,  to  tell  us  '  how  being 
is  made  '.  '  All  that  can  be  asked  of  philosophy  ',  I  ven- 
tured to  say  in  my  first  volume,  published  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  '  is,  by  the  help  of  the  most  complete 
analysis,  to  present  a  reasonable  synthesis  of  the  world  as 

1  Cf.   Ostwald,   Natural   Philosophy,  p.    140    (English   translation) ; 
Geddes  and  Thomson,  Evolution,  p.  231. 


v  TRUE  AND  FALSE  PHILOSOPHY          109 

we  find  it.  The  difference  between  a  true  and  a  false  philos- 
ophy is  that  a  false  philosophy  fixes  its  eye  on  a  part  only 
of  the  material  submitted  to  it,  and  would  explain  the 
whole,  therefore,  by  a  principle  which  is  adequate  merely 
to  one  of  its  parts  or  stages  ;^a  true  philosophy,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  one  which  "  sees  life  steadily,,  and  sees  it 
whole  "  —whose  principle,  therefore,  embraces  in  its  evolu- 
tion every  phase  of  the  actual.'  l 
r~~" 

1  The  Development  from  Kant  to  Hegel,  p.  66. 


LECTURE  VI 
MAN  AS  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD 

IT  is  as  between  human  intelligence  and  its  antecedent 
^  conditions  that  the  idea  of  a  chasm  or  absolute  break  is  most 

^deeply  rooted,  both  in  philosophy  and  in  ordinary  thought. 
A  variety  of  causes  have  contributed  to  create  and  perpetu- 
ate the  impression.  But  if  we  consistently  apply  in  this 
case  the  twin  principles  of  continuity  and  immanence,  and 
steadily  refuse  to  characterize  the  nature  of  the  world  till  we 
have  all  the  available  facts  before  us,  some  of  the  most  per- 
sistent difficulties  of  modern  thought  will  be  found,  I  think, 
to  disappear.  The  nature  of  the  power  at  work  in  any  proc- 

.ess,  I  urged  in  the  preceding  lecturers  only  revealed  in  the 
process  as  a  whole.  It  is  revealed  progressively  in  the 
different  stages,  but  it  cannot  be  fully  and  truly  known  till 
Jhe  final  stage  is  reached,  and  it  must  inevitably  lead  to  error. 

Jf  we  substantiate  any  of  the  stages  as  something  complete, 

,  in  itself  and  existing  by  itself.  Now  man — human  knowl- 
edge and  experience  generally — is,  from  this  point  of  view, 
the  last  term  in  the  series,  and  the  world  is  not  complete 

-without  him.  When  I  say  the  last  term  in  the  series,  this 
does  not  involve  any  arrogant  claim  on  man's  part  to  '  set 
himself  ',  in  Locke's  words,  '  proudly  at  the  top  of  all 
things ' ;  in  other  mansions  of  the  universe,  as  Locke 
quaintly  puts  it,  '  there  may  be  other  and  different  intelligent 
beings,  of  whose  faculties  he  has  as  little  knowledge  or  ap- 
prehension as  a  worm  shut  up  in  one  drawer  of  a  cabinet 
hath  of  the  senses  or  understanding  of  a  man.' '  Man  him- 

1  Essay,  II.  2.  3  It  is  probably  an  unconscious  reminiscence  of  this 
passage,  when  Huxley  says  (in  a  more  sceptical  interest)  that  we  may 
be  set  down  in  the  midst  of  infinite  varieties  of  existences  which  we  are 
not  competent  so  much  as  to  conceive — '  with  no  more  notion  of  what  is 


vi  THE  PROBLEM  OF  KNOWLEDGE          in 

self,  as  we  know  him,  assuredly  represents,  as  the  poet  says, 
the  dawn  and  not  the  day.1  Yet,  whatever  heights  beyond 
heights  may  open  above  us,  intelligence  is  in  principle  one, 
and  it  is  the  emergence  of  intelligence,  that  is  to  say,  of  be- 
ings with  powers  of  knowledge  and  appreciation  and  self- 
determination,  which  supplies  the  final  term,  the  goal  or 
consummation  of  the  evolutionary  process.  It  is  not,  in 
short,  with  man  specifically,  as  the  historical  denizen  of  this 
planet,  that  we  have  to  do,  but  with  man  as  rational,  in  how- 
ever humble  a  degree.  And  my  contention  is,  as  expressed  in 
the  title  of  this  lecture,  that  man  is  organic  to  the  world  i  or 
as  1  have  just  put  it,  the  world  is  not  complete  without  him. 
The  intelligent  being  is,  as  it  were,  the  organ  through  which 
the  universe  beholds  and  enjoys  itself. 

This  is,  of  course,  a  well-known  position  of  speculative 
idealism,  but  I  wish  to  present  it,  in  the  first  instance  at  any 
rate,  rather  from  the  side  of  the  higher  naturalism,  and  to 
emphasize  the  fact  of  man's  rootedness  in  nature,  so  that  the 
rational  intelligence  which  characterizes  him  may  appear  as 
the  culmination  of  a  continuous  process  of  immanent  devel- 
opment. I  desire  to  do  so  because  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me  that  some  of  the  central  difficulties  of  modern  thought 
arise  from  the  unconscious  habit  of  treating  man  as  if  he 
were  himself  no  denizen  of  the  world  in  which  he  draws 
his  breath — as  if  he  were,  so  to  say,  a  stranger  visitant,  con- 
templating ab  extra  an  independent  universe.  Otherwise 


why,  for  example,  should  it  seem  so  difficult — nay,  impos- 
sible, as  so  many  philosophers  would  persuade  us — fpr  man 
to  know  things  as  they  are?  why  should  it  be  impossible  for 
_  him  to  know  the  real  nature  of  anything,  or,  in  the  last  re- 
sort, to  know  anything  but  his  own  states?  The  so-called 
epistemological  problem  which  obsesses  modern  philosophy, 
from  Descartes  and  Locke  to  Kant  and  Spencer  and  the 

about  us  than  the  worm  in  a  flower-pot  on  a  London  balcony  has  of  the 
life  of  the  great  city  '  (Hume,  p.  286).  *  Tennyson,  '  The  Dawn  '. 


112          MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD       LECT. 

most  recent  magazine  discussions — .this,  problem,  with  all  the 
varieties  of  subjective  idealism,  agnosticism,  phenomenalism, 
and  sceptical  relativism  to  which  it  has  given  rise,  ^pends 
upon  the  presupposition  of  a  finished  world,  as  an  independ- 
ently existing  fact,  and  an  equally  independent  knower, 
equipped,  from  heaven  knows  where,  with  a  peculiar  appara^ 

,tus  of  faculties.  This  subjective  apparatus,  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  foreign  object,  colours  and  distorts  it  by  investing 
it  with  its  own  subjective  peculiarities,  and  so  the  mechanism 
of  knowledge  inevitably  defeats  its  own  purpose.  Do  what 
we  may,  our  faculties  get  between  us  and  the  things,  and  we 
never  know  anything  as  it  really  is.  As  Locke  sighs,  we  know 
not  the  real  essence  of  a  pebble  or  a  fly  or  of  our  own  selves. 
This  persistent  mystification  depends  largely,  I  urge,  ujx>n__ 

.extruding  man  from  the  world  he  seeks  to  know-  If  we 
keep  steadily  in  view  the  fact  that  man  is  from  beginning  to 
end,  even  qua  knower,  a  member  and,  as  it  were^an  organ  o_f 
the  universe,  knowledge  will  appear  to  us  in  a  more  natural 
light,  and  we  shall  not  be  tempted  to  open  this  miraculous 

^chasm  between  the  knower  and  the  realities  which  he  knows. 
When  one  thinks  of  the  labour  and  ingenuity  expended  upon 
this  problem  during  the  last  three  hundred  years,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  the  impatience  of  the  Pragmatists  with  the  whole 
discussion.  It  is,  indeed,  encouraging  to  note  that  both  the 
most  recent  movements  in  Britain  and  America — Pragma- 
tism and  the  so-called  JNew  Realism — seek,  each  in  its  own 
way,  to  rid  philosophy  of  a  self-made  difficulty  and  to  trans- 
fer discussion  to  more  fruitful  topics.  '  Things  are  what  they 

A  *IMIMII*M^^^H^^^^BMM0^M0*lMMiniB'*^fe 

are  experienced  as,'  says  Pragmatism  bluntly ; *  knowledge 
is  a  direct  relation  between  the  knower  and  the  reality 
known,  says  Realism — it  is  'sui  generis  and  as  such  cannot  be 
explained  ',  for  explanation,  in  the  sense  of  resolving  it  into 
simpler  elements,  could  only  mean  falsification  of  the  fact.2 

1  Dewey,  Influence  of  Darwin  on  Philosophy,  p.  227. 
*  Cf.  Prichard,  Kant's  Theory  of  Knowledge,  p.  115. 


vi  THE  EYE-METAPHOR  113 

I  would  merely  add,  as  a  reason  for  dwelling  on  this  point, 
that,  if  the  imputation  of  subjectivism  and  relativity 
attaches  with  any  justice  to  the  seemingly  objective  con- 
structions of  our  knowledge,  it  will  apply  with  even  greater 
force  to  the  world  of  values  in  which  our  inmost  and  most 
personal  nature  finds  expression.  \i  man's  knowledge  does 
not  put  him  in  touch  with  reality,  how  can  his  ideals  be 
supposed  to  furnish  a  clue  ?  They  will  be  treated  as  exotics, 
too  delicate  or,  according  to  the  critic's  mood,  too  sickly  for 
the  common  soil  and  the  common  air  of  the  world.  Whence, 
in  that  case,  the  seed  was  wafted  and  by  what  agencies  it  was 
nursed  to  maturity,  such  critics- do  not  too  narrowly  inquire. 

A  further  consequence  of  this  view  of  intelligence  as 
spectator  ab  extra  is  that  the  function  of  intelligence  is  con- 
ceived as  purely  cognitive,  in  the  sense  of  simply  reproducing 
or  mirroring  an  independent,  finished  reality.  Even  specu- 
lative idealism,  under  the  dominance  of  the  eye-metaphor, 
sometimes  falls  into  a  similar  mode  of  expression.  '  I  am 
the  eye  with  which  the  universe  beholds  itself  '  seems  an  apt 
expression  for  a  divine  experience,  conceived  on  purely  i 
theoretic  lines  somewhat  in  Aristotle's  fashion.  But  if  itj 
were  simply  reproduction  as  in  a  still  mirror,  we  might 
reasonably  ask,  with  Lotze,  what  point  or  value  such  a  '  bar-; 
ren  rehearsal '  could  possess.  To  Aristotle,  the  contempla-- 
tion  of  which  he  speaks  is  not  a  passionless  duplication  of 
existence,  but  #n  experience  of  intensest  fruition;  it  is  the 
supremely  blessed  life.  The  word  cognition  misleads  us  by 
its  exclusive  reference  to  the  object  as  something  external; 
we  forget  that  cognition  is  an  experience  of  the  soul,  and  as 
such  has  necessarily  its  feeling-value.  We  forget  that  the 
existence  of  such  living  centres,  capable  of  feeling  the  beauty 
and  grandeur  of  the  world  and  tasting  its  manifold  qualities, 
is  what  is  really  significant  in  the  universe.  To  a  collocation 
of  purely  unconscious  facts  it  would  be  impossible  to  attrib- 
ute any  value  either  collectively  or  individually.  All  values 


u4          MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD       LECT. 

are,  in  this  sense,  conscious  values.  Hence  it  is  that  the  sen- 
tient and,  still  more,  the  rational  being  appears  as  the  goal 
to  which  nature  is  working,  namely,  the  development  of  an 
organ  by  which  she  may  become  conscious  of  herself  and 
enter  into  the  joy  of  her  own  being.  Or,  as  Browning  more 
finely  puts  it  in  Paracelsus: 

God  tastes  an  infinite  joy 
In  infinite  ways.  .  .  . 
.  .  .  The  wroth  sea's  waves  are  edged 
With  foam,  white  as  the  bitten  lip  of  hate, 
When  in  the  solitary  waste,  strange  groups 
Of  young  volcanos  come  up,  cyclops-like, 
Staring  together  with  their  eyes  on  flame; — 
God  tastes  a  pleasure  in  their  uncouth  pride !  .  .  . 
The  shining  dorrs  are  busy ;  beetles  run 
Along  the  furrows,  ants  make  their  ado;  .  .  . 
Afar  the  ocean  sleeps ;  white  fishing-gulls 
Flit  where  the  strand  is  purple  with  its  tribe 
Of  nested  limpets;  savage  creatures  seek 
Their  loves  in  wood  and  plain — and  God  renews 
His  ancient  rapture ! 

It  is  this  living  experience,  steeped  in  feeling  and  instinct 
with  action,  which  is  the  real  fact  in  which  cognition,  as 
such,  is  but  an  element.  And,  in  the  case  of  man,  such  ex- 
perience means  the  building  up  of  a  mind  and  character. 
There  is  no  virtue  in  the  mere  repetition,  in  the  subject,  of  an 
independent  object :  the  function  of  cognition  in  experience 
is  either  to  subserve  our  practical  activity  or  to  awaken  in- 
sights of  beauty,  the  sympathetic  thrill  of  kindred  being  and, 
the  pure  joy  of  intellectual  conquest  and  harmony.1 

1  The  idea  of  intelligence  as  purely  cognitive  seems  to  be  consistent 
only  with  the  epiphenomenal  or  automaton  theory  of  consciousness.  On 
that  theory  mind  is  simply  the  inactive  and  useless  mirror  of  an  inde- 
pendent happening.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Shadworth  Hodgson's  ex- 
pressions, in  his  exposition  of  the  theory,  are  the  best  examples  that 
could  be  cited  of  the  view  of  consciousness  which  I  am  repudiating. 
'  Pain ',  he  says  consistently,  '  must  be  held  to  be  no  warning  to  abstain 
from  the  thing  which  has  caused  pain ;  pleasure  no  motive  to  seek  the 
thing  which  has  caused  pleasure;  pain  no  check,  pleasure  no  spur,  to 


vi  THE  CARTESIAN  DUALISM  115 

The  more  we  allow  our  thoughts  to  play  freely  on  the 
idea,  the  more  extraordinary  appears  the  substantiation  of 
the  knower  into  a  being  outside  the  world  he  desires  to  know, 
and  the  treatment  of  the  two  as  separate  and  independent 
facts  which  have  a  merely  contingent  relation  to  one  another. 
Yet  this  is  just  the,  dualism  of  the  res  coyitans  and  the  res 
^extensa  with  which  modern  philosophy  starts  in  Descartes, 
and  from  which,  in  many  quarters,  it  has  not  even  yet 
emancipated  itself.  The  two  facts,  as  I  have  said,  are 
conceived  as  having  no  organic  relation  to  one  another; 
the  one  is  in  no  way  the  complement  of  the  other,  in  such 
fashion  that  the  being  of  things  naturally  passes  over  into 
consciousness  and  finds  expression  there,  while  (from  the 
other  side)  the  conscious  being  as  naturally  reads  the  face  of 
a  world  which  he  feels  to  be  continuous  with  his  own  being. 
The  process  of  knowledge  accomplishes  itself,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  with  perfect  simplicity  and  naturalness;  but  philos- 
ophers have  dug  a  chasm  which  cannot  be  bridged  between 
the  knowledge  of  the  knower,  conceived  as  a  state  of  his  own 
being,  and  the  real  thing  which  he  knows,  or  rather  fancies 
he  knows.  For  if  there  is  no  essential  relation  between  the 
two  facts,  such  as  would  constitute  them  no  longer  two  un- 
connected facts,  but  two  elements  in  one  single  fact — if  they 
are  taken  as  really  brought,  so  to  speak,  into  accidental  con- 
tact with  one  another — what  guarantee  is  there  that  my 
knowledge  represents  things  as  they  really  are  ?  Is  that  pos- 
sibility not  rather  excluded  ab  initiof  For  I  can  know 
things  only  as  they  appear  to  me  through  the  medium  of  my 
bodily  and  mental  organization;  my  knowledge,  therefore, 
must  inevitably  be  merely  phenomenal,  merely  relative.  On 
one  side  of  the  chasm  we  thus  get  the  thing-in-itself,  the 
thing  as  it  is  supposed  to  exist  apart  from  being  known, 

action.'  Consciousness  when  it  arises,  he  says,  is  '  not  a  new  existence 
but  the  perception  of  the  pre-existing  world ',  '  nothing  but  a  mirror  or 
reduplication  of  the  pre-existing  and  simultaneously  existing  world'. 
(Theory  of  Practice,  vol.  i,  pp.  338,  339,  416.) 


ii6          MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD       LECT. 

which  is  eventually  described,  with  perfect  consistency,  as 
the  unknown  and  unknowable;  and  on  the  other  side  of  the 
chasm  we  have  a  subjective  modification,  which  is  as  a  veil 
between  us  and  the  object  rather  than  a  revelation  of  its  real 
nature.  ^Because  we  began  by  denying  any  real  relatedness 
between  nature  and  mind,  we  end  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
relativity  of  knowledge.  Relatedness  means  continuity  of 
process  and  truth  of  result — knowledge  and  reality  as  com- 
plementary elements  of  one  system.  Relativity,  in  the  cur- 
rent sense  of  the  term,  means  a  finished  world  of  fact  com- 
plete in  itself,  but  subsequently  brought  into  contact  with 
(what  would  almost  seem  to  be)  some  extra-mundane 
creature  in  whom  it  produces  certain  effects.  But  these 
effects,  being  conditioned  mainly  by  the  creature's  curious 
constitution,  must  be  held  to  reveal  rather  the  nature  of  the 
creature  than  the  nature  of  the  world  which  started  the 
process  of  which  they  are  the  outcome. 

The  vitality  of  the  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge 
—which  is  as  much  as  to  say  the  truth  it  contains — is  en- 
irely  derived  from  its  polemic  against  a  wrongly-stated 
Realism,  and  against  the  copy-theory  of  truth,  which  our 
present-day  pragmatists  have  made  the  object  of  their  attack. 
The  copy-theory,  on  the  basis  of  the  traditional  philosophical 
dualism,  defends  what  it  calls  the  '  correspondence '  of 
knowledge  with  reality.  In  that  correspondence  it  finds  its 
definition  of  truth.  It  is  easy,  of  course,  to  put  a  sense  upon 
the  phrase  which  would  remove  any  objection  to  such  a  defi- 
nition ;  but  correspondence,  for  the  copy-theory,  means  such 
a  relation  as  obtains  between  a  picture  and  the  object  which 
it  represents.  ^  In  some  such  way  the  independent  world  of 
things,  with  their  qualities  and  relations,  is  supposed  to  be 
reproduced  in  the  knowing  mind.  We  witness  in  Locke 
and  Berkeley  the  break-down  of  this  theory.  Locke  still 
clings  to  the  theory  in  the  case  of  the  primary  qualities: 
their  '  patterns  '  do  really  exist  in  the  things  quite  apart  from 


vi  LOCKE  AND  BERKELEY  117 

our  knowledge  of  them.  But  he  abandons  it  in  the  case  of 
the  secondary  qualities;  the  latter  exhibit  only  such  corre- 
spondence or  conformity  as  exists  between  a  cause  and  its 
effect.  They  are  true  in  so  far  as  they  are  the  effects  which 
things,  in  virtue  of  modifications  of  their  primary  qualities, 
are  fitted  to  produce  in  us.  .They_are  the  effects  which  God 
has  arranged  that  things  should  produce,  when  acting  on  our 
sensibility.1  Berkeley's  philosophy  is  a  criticism  of  this  com- 
promise. The  primary  qualities  are  as  much  ideas  of  sense, 
he  argues,  as  the  secondary :  where  the  secondary  are,  there 
the  primary  are  also,  namely,  in  the  mind.  The  notion  of  an 
idea  being  '  like  '  some  original  in  a  non-mental  world  is 
transparently  absurd,  inasmuch  as  the  comparison  required 
to  ascertain  such  likeness  is  inherently  impossible ;  ^an  idea 
can  only  be  like  an  idea.  Our  whole  sense-experience,  there- 
fore^ is_treated  by  Berkeley,  as  Locke  treated  the  secondary 
qualities,  namely,  as  a  series  of  effects  produced  in  the  indi- 
vidual mind— produced,  however,  not  as  Locke  assumed  by 
an  independent  world  of  material  substances,  but  ^y  the  im-^ 
^mediate  causation  of  the  divine  will.  There  is  therefore  no 
relation  between  knowledge  and  an  external  or  trans-sub- 
jective reality  which  it  has  in  some  fashion  to  copy  or  repre- 
sent. Knowledge  is  entirely  an  internal  experience,  and  our 
sense-ideas  and  their  relations  of  concomitance  and  se- 
quence, being  taken  as  the  immediate  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty,  are  themselves  the  only  originals  we  require. 
Berkeley's  world,  apart  from  his  theistic  postulate,  is,  in 
fact,  in  William  James's  phrase,  '  a  world  of  pure  experi- 
ence ',  in  which  one  part  points  cognitively  to  other  parts,  but 
which  does  not  point  as  a  whole  to  any  extra-experiential 
world  on  which  it  rests  or  which  it  somehow  renders  to  us. 
Conclusive  as  a  criticism  of  the  ordinary  correspondence- 
theory,  Berkeleianism  is  vitiated  by  the  fact  that  it  takes  as 
its  starting-point  and  basis  the  fundamental  tenet  of 
1  Essay,  II.  30.  2. 


ii8          MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD       LECT. 

sentationism,_  thejpresupposition  that  the  primary  or  direct 
object  of  knowledge  is  a  state  of  our  own  mind.  And  if  this 
is  the  very  reverse  of  the  truth,  it  follows  that  what  is  true 
in  Berkeley's  way  of  putting  things  must  be  re-stated  in  a 
form  which  will  not  conflict  with  the  realism  of  our  com- 
mon-sense beliefs.  Berkeley  is  always  elaborately  anxious  to 
persuade  us  that  he  is  in  agreement  with  '  the  vulgar  ',  but 
neither  he  nor  any  of  his  interpreters  or  successors  has  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  the  world  that  this  is  really  the  case. 

The  Kantian  theory  is  in  some  respects  a  return  to  the 
position  of  Locke.  There  are,  of  course,  too  many  strands 
in  Kant's  doctrine  to  admit  of  its  being  presented  as  a  con- 
sistent whole;  but  if  we  take  it  as  it  originally  shaped  itself 
in  his  own  mind,  we  find  a  strong  reassertion  of  the  refer- 
ence in  knowledge  to  real  things.  This  is  at  once  an  initial 
assumption  and,  in  the  face  of  misunderstanding  and  chal- 
lenge, an  explicit  polemic  against  subjective  idealism  of  the 
Berkeleian  stamp.  Kant  resembles  Locke  also  in  starting 
with  the  acceptance  of  the  representative  theory  of  knowl- 
edge, the  view,  that  is  to  say,  that  we  are  primarily  limited  to 
a  knowledge  of  our  own  states.  In  his  own  words,  we  know 
'  only  the  mode  in  which  our  senses  are  affected  by  an  un- 
known something  V  As  Hutchison  Stirling  puts  it,2  the 
scratch  only  knows  itself;  it  knows  nothing  of  the  thorn. 
But  whereas  Locke  applied  this  causal  method  of  interpreta- 
tion only  to  the  secondary  qualities,  the  primary  qualities  are 
also  treated  by  Kant  as  subjective  for  a  different  reason, 
seeing  that  he  regards  space,  and  consequently  the  geomet- 
rical or  space-filling  qualities  of  bodies,  as  a  contribution  of 
the  mind  in  the  act  of  knowing.  But  if  both  primary  and 

1  Prolegomena,  section  32.  '  It  is  incomprehensible  ',  he  explains  else- 
where (Prolegomena,  section  9),  'how  the  perception  of  a  present  ob- 
ject should  give  me  a  knowledge  of  that  object  as  it  is  in  itself,  seeing 
that  its  properties  cannot  migrate  or  wander  over  (hiniiberwandern) 
into  my  presentative  faculty.' 

'  Textbook  to  Kant,  p.  353. 


vi  KANT'S  PHENOMENALISM  119 

secondary  qualities  are  thus  subjective  constructions,  the 
real  object  which  we  set  out  to  know  remains  on  the  farther 
side  of  knowledge  as  an  unattainable  Beyond — the  abstrac- 
tion of  an  unknowable  thing-in-itself.  This  is  the  aspect  of  \ 
the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge  which  made  his  doctrine  I 
one  of  the  fountain-heads  of  modern  agnosticism.  In  conse-| 
quence  of  our  ignorance  of  this  real  background,  our  knowl- 
edge is  throughout  a  knowledge  only  of  phenomena.  The 
world  of  experience,  whether  of  ordinary  life  or  of  scientific 
theory,  is,  for  Kant,  either  a  quasi-Berkeleian  world  of 
sense-ideas,  connected  together  by  the  rational  bonds 
of  the  categories  instead  of  by  the  associational  forces  of 
custom ;  or  it  is  the  distorted  vision  of  a  reality,  the  fact  of 
whose  existence  is  an  immediate  certainty  present  in  all 
our  experience,  but  whose  nature  that  experience  is  essen- 
tially impotent  to  reveal.  Jteality  on  this  view  is  the  ulti- 
mate subject  of  predication,  but  all  our  predicates  only 
draw  more  systematically  round  us  the  veil  of  our  own  sub- 
jectivity. 

Popular  philosophy  may  be  said  to  oscillate  between  an 
agnostic  relativism  based  on  such  considerations,  and  a  semi- 
Lockian  view  apparently  sanctioned  by  the  teaching  of 
physical  science  and  physiological  psychology.  We  come 
back  in  such  thinking  to  the  old  distinction  between  the 
primary  qualities,  as  constituting  the  real  nature  of  the  ob- 
jective fact,  and  the  secondary,  as  subjective  effects  depend- 
ent upon  the  specific  constitution  of  our  organs  of  sense  and  / 
^nervous  structure  generally.  We  return,  in  short,  to  the 
conception  of  the  physical  scheme  of  moving  particles  or 
ethereal  vibrations  of  varying  amplitudes  and  speeds  as  the 
self -subsisting  world,  and  all  the  rest  as  passing  appearances 
to  finite  subjects.  But  this  is  practically  to  adopt  the  funda- 


mental presupposition  of  materialism. 

The  crux  of  the  philosophical  question  thus  becomes  the 
objectivity  of  the  secondary  qualities — whether,  or  in  what 


120          MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD       LECT. 

sense,  they  are  to  be  taken  as  objective  determinations  of 
reality.  In  one  sense,  of  course,  every  one  would  admit  their 
objectivity,  in  so  far  as  they  have  in  each  case  their  physical 
counterpart,  in  the  shape  of  some  specific  arrangement  of 
molecules  or  some  specific  form  of  motion.  But,  according 
to  the  popular  scientific  view  which  we  are  considering,  that 
molecular  mechanism  gives  us  the  truth  of  nature.  It  is 
nature  as  an  objective  system;  whereas  our  translation  of 
the  mechanism  into  terms  of  sensation  is  a  subjective  proc- 
ess. The  results  of  that  process  may  be  of  much  interest 
to  us,  because  of  the  feeling-tone  of  the  secondary  qualities 
and  their  intimate  connexion  with  the  higher  emotional  life; 
but  they  are  not,  as  such — as  colour,  for  example,  or  as 
sound — predicable  of  nature  in  the  same  way  in  which  the 
physical  properties  are.  There  is  a  fine  chapter  in  Lotze's 
Mikrokosmos,*  in  which  he  enters  an  eloquent  protest 
against  the  stereotyped  error  of  supposing  that  we  come 
nearer  the  truth  of  reality  when  we  abstract  in  this  way  from 
the  conditions  under  which  it  is  revealed  to  us — when  we 
seek  that  truth  not  in  the  appearance  of  the  world  as  it  offers 
iitself  to  the  knowing  mind,  but  in  the  stage-mechanism 
.which  effectuates  this  result.  '  Instead  of  setting  up  the  ex- 
ternal as  the  goal  to  which  all  the  efforts  of  our  sensation  are 
to  be  directed,  why  should  we  not  rather  look  upon  the  sensu- 
ous splendour  of  light  and  sound  as  the  end  which  all  these 
dispositions  of  the  external  world,  whose  obscurity  we  de- 
plore, are  designed  to  realize  ?  What  pleases  us  in  a  drama 
that  we  see  developed  before  us  on  the  stage  is  the  poetical 
Idea  and  its  inherent  beauty ;  no  one  would  expect  to  enhance 
this  enjoyment  or  discern  a  profounder  truth  if  he  could  in- 
dulge in  an  examination  of  the  machinery  that  effects  the 
changes  of  scenery  and  illumination.  .  .  .  The  course  of  the 
universe  is  such  a  drama  ;Jts  essential  truth  is  the  meaning 
set  forth  so  as  to  be  intelligible  to  the  spirit.  The  other  in 
1  Book  III,  chap,  iv,  '  Life  in  Matter*. 


vi  THE  SECONDARY  QUALITIES  121 

which,  deceived  by  prejudice,  we  seek  the  true  being  of 
things,  is  nothing  but  the  apparatus  on  which  depends  that 
which  alone  possesses  value,  the  reality  of  this  beauteous 
appearance.  .  .  .  Let  us  therefore  cease  to  lament  as  if  the 
reality  of  things  escaped  our  apprehension;  on  the  contrary, 
their  reality  consists  in  that  as  which  they  appear  to  us;| 
and  all  that  they  are  before  they  are  made  manifest  to  us  is 
the. mediating  preparation  for  this  final  realization  of  their  .• 
very  being.     The  beauty  of  colours  and  tones,  warmth  and 
fragrance,  are  what  Nature  in  itself  strives  to  produce  and  i 
express,  but  cannot  do  so  by  itself;  for  this  it  needs  as  its! 
last  and  noblest  instrument  the  sentient  mind,  which  alone ; 
can  put  into  words  its  mute  striving  and,  in  the  glory  of  | 
sentient  intuition,  set  forth  in  luminous  actuality  what  all 
the  motions  and  gestures  of  the  external  world  were  vainly 
endeavouring  to  express.' 

Common  sense  clearly  takes  this  view,  and  rejects  the 
cheap  profundity  of  popular  science.  Colours  and  sounds 
are  for  it  not  merely  sensations  or  internal  states;  they  are 
unmistakable  predicates  of  the  real.  And  a  better  psycho- 
logical analysis  bears  out  this  presupposition.  .When  the 
psychologist  introspectively  analyses  what  he  calls  the 
sensation  of  red,  what  he  is  really  analysing  is  the  process 
.of  perceiving  a  red  object.  Red,  as  a  conscious  fact,  is  from 
beginning  to  end  a. quality  of  objects.  Just  consider  for 
a  moment  what  the  world  would  be  if  it  were  stripped  of  the 
secondary  qualities;  remove  the  eye  and  the  other  senses 
and  what  remains?  As  Stirling  vividly  puts  it,  taking  as  his 
instance  the  astronomical  spectacle  of  the  heavens:  'All 
that  is  going  on,  all  these  globes  are  whirling  in  a  darkness 
blacker  than  the  mouth  of  wolf,  deeper  than  the  deepest  pit 
that  ever  man  has  sunk — all  that  is  going  on,  all  that  is 
taking  place  in  a  darkness  absolute;  and  more  ...  in 
a  silence  absolute,  in  a  silence  that  never  a  whisper  .  .  . 
never  the  most  momentary  echo  breaks.  .  .  .  It  is  in  a  cave, 


122         MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD         LECT. 

in  a  den,  blacker  than  the  blackest  night,  soundless  and  more 
silent  than  the  void  of  voids,  that  all  those  intermingling 
motions  of  the  globes  go  on — but  for  us,  that  is;  but  for  an 
eye  and  an  ear  and  a  soul  behind  them.' l  It  is  enough  to 
make  this  simple  reflection  to  recognize  the  helpless  unreality 
bf  the  abstraction.  As  Professor  Bosanquet  says,  Mf  the 
world  apart  from  knowledge  has  no  secondary  qualities,  it 

s  hardly  anything  of  what  we  care  for.  It  is  not  recogniz- 
able as  our  world  at  all.'  \  Moreover,  if  we  are  to  reject  the 
secondary  qualities  on  account  of  their  dependence  on  or- 
ganic conditions,  are  the  primary  not  in  the  end  in  the  same 
case? 

I  find  what  I  take  to  be  the  philosophical  truth  of  the 
situation  put  with  the  simplicity  and  force  of  ripe  meta- 
physical insight  in  the  seventh  Meditation  of  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Laurie's  Synthetica.  The  fundamental  point,  is  that 
which  I  began  by  insisting  on,  that  man  the  knower  is 
%  within  the  real  system  which  he  knows,  and  that  as  regards , 
his  knowledge  of  nature  'his  body  is  within  the  nature-, 
system  and  continuous  with  it '.  It  is  good  for  sanity  of 
thinking  to  hold  fast  by  the  bodily  aspect  of  man's  existence; 
man's  cognitive  function  is  exercised  through  his  organism. 
And,  once  more,  do  not  let  us  be  misled  into  treating  the 
organism  in  turn,  as  we  saw  some  theories  treated  the  mind 
and  its  faculties,  as  a  principle  of  isolation  and  subjectivity, 
cutting  us  off  from  the  real.  Do  not  let  us  be  misled,  I  mean, 
into  ascribing  the  specific  qualities  of  the  object  as  known  to 
peculiarities  of  our  sense-organs  rather  than  to  anything 
inherent  in  the  object  itself.  .Man's  organism  is  the  very 
means  by  which  he  is  put  in  relation  with  reality.  Through 
it  the  content  of  the  real  world  is  conveyed  to  him,  and 
through  this  communication  he  himself  becomes  a  real  sub- 
ject. For  it  cannot  be  too  carefully  remembered  that  the 

1  Philosophy  and  Theology  (Gifford  Lectures),  p.  78. 
'Logic,  vol.  ii,  p.  308  (second  edition). 


vi          RELATEDNESS  AND  RELATIVITY          123 

subject  is  himself  a  pure  abstraction,  apart  from  the  real 
system  with  which  he  is  in  relation  and  which  gives  him  his 
mental  filling.  As  Laurie  puts  it,  'I  do  not  like  to  say 
subject  is  object  and  object  is  subject,  lest  I  should  be  mis- 
understood; but  in  truth,  the  subject,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
a  Real  and  not  a  mere  entitative  potency,  is  a  Real  by  virtue 
of  the  object  as  reflected  into  it.'  Hence  the  fact  that  con- 
sciousness of  an  external  object,  say,  of  a  cloud,  is  the  final 
result  of  a  complicated  set  of  processes,  partly  in  external 
nature  and  partly  within  the  body  of  the  percipient,  does 
not  vitiate  the  truth  of  the  result.  '  On  the  contrary  the 
process  exists  for  the  very  purpose  of  presenting  that  cloud 
as  I  see  it,  to  the  subject  as  conscious.'  And  the  so-callec| 
secondary  qualities  of  objects  are  just  as  real  as  space  an(f 
time  are.  '  When  physics  has  said  its  last  word  about  that 
cloud  as  a  dynamical  system  of  molecules  and  vibrations, 
that  too  I  shall  be  aware  of  only  as  "  related  "  to  conscious  , 
subject;  and  it  will  be  as  much  "  relative  "  as  the  cloud  in 
all  its  summer  beauty  as  seen  by  the  eye  of  child  or  poet:  , 
that  is  to  say,  not  "  relative  "  at  all.  .  .  .  For  the  real  is 
Jruly  to  be  found  in  the  final  presentation  to  subject;  it  is  in 


that  crisis  that  the  thing  gathers  up  all  its  causal  conditions 
and  prior  processes  (etheric,  dynamic,  or  what  not)  and 
offers  itself  to  us  in  all  the  richness  of  its  phenomenal  indi- 
viduality.,  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  bony  skeleton  of  ab- 
stract mathematico-physical  explanation  is  clothed  with  flesh 
and  blood  and  lives;  it  is  this  that  touches  the  emotions  of 
the  human  breast,  and  gives  birth  in  poetry  and  the  other 
arts  to  the  highest  utterances  of  genius  regarding  our  com- 
plex experiences.' *  Thus  consciousness,  as  he  puts  it  almost 
in  Lotze's  words,  '  provides  the  last  explanatory  term  of  the 
^  presentation.  Save  in  a  conscious  subject  the  object  cannot 
fulfil  itself.  .  .  .  The  world  without  conscious  subject  is  a 
world  waiting  for  its  meaning — an  uncompleted  circle  wait- 
1  Synthetica,  vol.  i,  pp.  83-5. 


124        MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD         LECT. 

ing  to  be  closed.  .  .  .  .Thus  it  is  that  the  specific  characters 
Q£  our  consciousness  are  the  specific  characters  of  the 
"  other  "  or  the  object.  TJie  former  do  not  merely  corre-. 
^pond  to  the  latter :  they  are  the  latter  as  fulfilled  in  a  world 
^  which  is  a  "  system  ",  and  in  which,  consequently,  sentient 
,mind  and  nature  are  in  organic  community.' l 

We  get  here  a  Natural  Realism,  but  not  of  the  old  type ; 
for  this  Realism  is  also  a  Monism.    The  older  Natural  Real- 

^~fc*>in— •"T"""" *"" 

ism,  while  it  asserts  the  direct  presence  of  reality  to  the 
percipient  subject,  appears  still  to  hold  the  two-substance 
dualism  from  which  the  whole  mischief  flows.  Consequently 
it  seems  to  find  a  difficulty  in  reconciling  the  assertion  of 
a  direct  and  true  knowledge  of  reality  with  the  undoubted 
fact  of  process  or  mediation.  Conceiving  mind,  no  less 
than  matter,  as  a  substance  (though  a  substance  of  essen- 
tially opposite  nature,  removed  from  matter,  as  the  saying 
goes,  by  the  whole  diameter  of  being)  the  Natural  Realists 
seem  inclined  to  deny  mediation  altogether,  and,  as  Hart- 
mann  somewhat  crassly  expresses  it,  to  put  mind  with  its 
nose  up  against  the  material  object.  Hence  such  problems 
as  Hamilton  raises,  in  criticizing  Reid,  as  to  what  external 
object  it  is  that  we  immediately  perceive,  and  his  final  con- 
clusion that  the  immediate  object  of  knowledge  is  '  really 
an  affection  of  the  bodily  organism  '.z  '  We  actually  per- 
ceive at  the  external  point  of  sensation  and  we  perceive 
the  material  reality,'  but  '  we  perceive  through  no  sense 
aught  external  but  what  is  in  immediate  relation  and  in 
immediate  contact  with  its  organ  '.3  Hence,  as  he  puts  it 
more  elaborately  in  his  edition  of  Reid,  '  the  mind  per- 
ceives nothing  external  to  itself  except  the  affections  of 
the  organism  as  animated,  the  reciprocal  relations  of  these 
affections  and  the  correlative  involved  in  the  consciousness 
of  its  locomotive  energy  being  resisted  '.  '  The  primary 
qualities  are  perceived  as  in  our  organism  ',  and  such  per- 

1  Synthetica,  vol.  i,  pp.  91,  107.    *  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  vol.  ii,  p.  137. 
1  Ibid.,  pp.  129-30. 


vi  NATURAL  REALISM  125 

ception  '  does  not,  originally  and  in  itself,  reveal  to  us  the 
existence,  and  qualitative  existence,  of  aught  beyond  the 
organism';  while  'colour  in  itself,  as  apprehended  or 
immediately  known  by  us,  is  a  mere  affection  of  the  sentient 
organism,  and  therefore,  like  the  other  secondary  qualities, 
an  object,  not  of  perception,  but  of  sensation,  proper  V 
Such  a  theory  is  not  the  Natural  Realism  of  common  sense 
at  all,  and  would  never  have  been  devised  but  for  the  mate- 
rialistic substantiation  of  mind  as  a  so-called  immaterial 
substance,  which  must  somewhere  and  somehow  come  in 
contact  with  any  object  if  it  is  to  perceive  it.  It  is  part  of 
Hamilton's  theory  that  the  mind  is  present  in  this  way  at 
all  parts  of  the  organism  and  not  merely  in  the  brain,  so 
that,  for  example,  '  the  mind  feels  at  the  finger-points  as 
consciousness  assures  us  '. 2  Now  it  is  certainly  on  the 
physical  continuity  of  my  organism  with  the  whole  material 
system  that  my  entire  knowledge  of  that  system  depends; 
but  for  knowledge  so  mediated  there  is  neither  near  nor 
far.  What  I  locate  at  the  end  of  my  fingers  is  exactly  on 
the  same  footing  as  the  remotest  star  projected  on  the 
bosom  of  the  night.  They  are  both  mediated  by  a  process; 
but  the  mind  is  present  to  both,  and  they  are  both  per- 
ceived directly  and  as  they  are.  Body  is  the  medium  of 
mind  in  a  far  more  intimate  sense  than  is  contemplated 
in  such  a  theory  of  their  connexion  as  Hamilton's  language 
would  imply.  Materialistic  as  it  may  sound,  it  would  be 
far  more  correct  to  say  that  the  body  perceives,  than  to 
figure  physiological  movements  and  contacts  transmitted 
or  passed  on,  as  it  were,  to  a  second  entity  called  mind.3 

1  Hamilton's  Reid,  vol.  ii,  pp.  881,  885. 

*  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  vol.  ii,  p.  128. 

8  Locke,  it  is  perhaps  worth  remembering,  left  it  an  open  question 
'whether  Omnipotency  has  not  given  to  some  systems  of  matter,  fitly 
disposed,  a  power  to  perceive  and  think,  or  else  joined  and  fixed  to  mat- 
ter, so  disposed,  a  thinking  immaterial  substance  ' ;  and  he  was  of  opinion 
that  '  all  the  great  ends  of  morality  and  religion  are  well  enough  secured, 
without  philosophical  proofs  of  the  soul's  immateriality  '  (Essay,  IV.  3.  6). 


126         MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD        LECT. 

Perhaps  it  would  sound  materialistic  only  because,  under 
the  unconscious  influence  of  the  long  dualistic  tradition, 
we  continue  to  think  of  the  body  in  merely  physical  terms. 
Aristotle,  Jt  will  be  remembered,  compared  the  distinction 
between  body  and  soul  to  that  between  matter  and  form, 
and.  defined  soul  as  the  realization  of  the  potentialities  of 
the  organized  body — the  completed  idea,  so  to  speak,  of 
that  which  it  has  it  in  it  to  be.  Hamilton's  abandonment 
of  the  notion  of  a  special  seat  of  the  soul — his  conception  of 
it  as  present  at  every  part  of  the  bodily  organism — might, 
in  itself,  be  taken  as  a  step  in  the  direction  of  a  truer  theory; 
but  as  actually  stated,  in  terms  of  the  old  metaphysical 
dualism,  it  is  a  grotesque  combination  of  the  points  of  view 
of  physiology  and  of  common  sense — a  combination  which 
fails  in  justice  to  the  truth  of  either. 

To  return  to  the  question  of  the  secondary  qualities,  it- 
is  obvious  how  a  genuinely  realistic  theory  such  as  I  have 
sketched  and  illustrated,  incorporates  into  itself  all  that 
is  true  in  the  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge.  The 
range  as  well  as  the  quality  of  our  knowledge  of  the  external 
world — its  delicacy  and  precision — depend  undoubtedly  on 
the  structure  of  the  sense-organs  and  the  nervous  system 
generally.  The  universe  must  therefore  appear  differently 
to  different  creatures  according  to  the  difference  pf  their 
equipment  in  these  respects.  The  development  of  the 
special  senses  out  of  a  general  sensibility  to  contact  is  an 
evolutionary  commonplace.  One  creature  exhibits  a  vague 
organic  sensitiveness  to  the  difference  between  light  and 
darkness.  By  another,  with  a  rudimentary  organ  of  vision, 
the  difference  between  the  two  is  clearly  perceived;  and, 
as  the  organ  is  perfected,  there  is  added,  with  ever-increas- 
ing precision  and  delicacy,  the  perception  of  the  different 
colours  and  the  discrimination  of  their  finest  shades.  Simi- 
larly the  sense  of  hearing  advances  from  '  a  sensitiveness  to 
concussions  affecting  the  whole  environment '  to  accurate 


vi  EVOLUTION  OF  SENSE-ORGANS  127 

localization  and  the  refinements  of  musical  appreciation. 
Each  creature,  therefore,  has  its  own  world,  in  the  sense 
that  it  sees  only  what  it  has  the  power  of  seeing;  but  what 
it  apprehends,  up  to  the  limit  of  its  capacity,  is  a  true" 
account  of  the  environment,  so  far  as  it  goes.  And  the 
progressive  development  of  more  delicate  organs  of  appre- 
hension just  means  the  discovery  of  fresh  aspects  of  the 
world,  qualities  and  distinctions  of  its  real  being,  too  subtle 
to  be  appreciated  by  the  ruder  instruments  previously 
at  our  disposal.  There  is  no  explanation  possible  of  the 
evolution  of  the  sense-organs  and  of  The  sentient  organism 
generally,  unless  we  assume  the  reality  of  the  new  features 
of  the  world  to  which  that  evolution  introduces  us.  fhe 
organism  is  developed  and  its  powers  perfected  as  an  instru- 
ment of  nature's  purpose  of  self-revelation.1 

And  what  is  thus  asserted  of  the  secondary  qualities 
will  hold  also  of  what  Professor  Bosanquet  in  one  place  calls 
the  '  tertiary '  qualities,  the  aspects  of  beauty  and  sub- 
limity which  we  recognize  in  nature,  and  the  finer  spirit  of 
sense  revealed  by  the  insight  of  the  poet  and  the  artist. 
These  things  also  are  not  subjective  imaginings;  they  give 
us  a  deeper  truth  than  ordinary  vision,  just  as  the  more 
developed  eye  or  ear  carries  us  farther  into  nature's  refine- 
ments and  beauties.  The  truth  of  the  poetic  imagination 
is  perhaps  the  profoundest  doctrine  of  a  true  philosophy. 
'  I  am  certain  of  nothing  ',  said  Keats,  '  but  of  the  holiness 
of  the  heart's  affections  and  the  truth  of  Imagination.'  It 

1  Instead  of  speaking  of  primary  and  secondary  qualities,  Laurie  sug- 
gests a  distinction  between  the  qjuantitatiyejpr  common  sensibles,  as  Aris- 
totle called  them,  and  the  qualitative  or  proper  sensibles,  and  he  points 
out,  suggestively,  as  it  seems  to  me,  that  '  through  these  qualitative 
affections  we  ascertain  certain  peculiar  characters  of  the  quantitative 
external  which,  but  for  the  subjective  qualitative  feeling,  would  never 
have  been  the  object  of  physical  investigation  at  all '.  Science,  when 
thus  set  upon  the  track,  can  show  us  the  quantitative  equivalent  of  a 
colour  or  a  sound ;  but  it  is  as  if  '  the  more  subtle  characters  of  the  ob- 
ject cannot  be  conveyed  quantitatively  in  sensation  but  only  qualita- 
tively'. Cf.  Synthetica,  vol.  i,  pp.  114-16. 


128        MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD         LECT. 

is  with  the  second  of  these  far-reaching  certainties  that 
we  are  here  concerned.  The  poet,  it  has  been  often  said, 
is  a  revealer;  he  teaches  us  to  see,  and  what  he  shows  us  is 
really  in  the  facts.  It  is  not  put  into  them,  but  elicited  from 
them  by  his  intenser  sympathy.  Did  Wordsworth  spread 
the  fictitious  glamour  of  an  individual  fancy  over  the  hills 
and  vales  of  his  beloved  Lakeland,  or  was  he  not  rather  the 
voice  by  which  they  uttered  their  inmost  spirit  to  the 
world?  Remember  his  own  noble  claim  for  poetry  as 
'  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge,  the  impassioned 
expression  which  is  in  the  countenance  of  all  science '.  *  Qj[ 
genius  in  the  fine  arts/  he  says, '  the  only  infallible  sign  is  the 
widening  of  the  sphere  of  human  sensibility,  for  the  delight, 
honour  and  benefit  of  human  nature.  Genius  is  the  intro- 
duction of  a  new  element  into  the  intellectual  universe  .  .  . 
it  is  an  advance  or  a  conquest  made  by  the  soul  of  the 
j)oet.'  But,  again,  the  new  element  is  not  imported;  the 
advance  is  an  advance  in  the  interpretation  of  the  real 
world,  a  new  insight  which  brings  us  nearer  to  the  truth  of 
things.  Hence,  when  Coleridge  says  in  a  well-known 
passage, 

O  Lady,  we  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  doth  Nature  live, 

the  statement  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  truth,  if  it  be 
taken  to  mean  that  the  beauty  of  nature  is  reflected  upon 
it  from  the  subjective  spirit  of  the  observer,  and  does  not 
express  what  Wordsworth  calls  '  the  spirit  of  the  place  V 

1  Certainly  when  we  give  way  to  '  the  pathetic  fallacy ',  investing 
nature  with  our  transient  moods  of  joy  or  grief,  we  fall  into  this  sub- 
jectivism and  falsify  the  facts.  To  take  a  glaring  example: 

Call  it  not  vain  :  they  do  not  err, 
Who  say,  that  when  the  Poet  dies, 
Mute  nature  mourns  her  worshipper, 
And  celebrates  his  obsequies  : 
Who  say,  tall  cliff  and  cavern  lone 
For  the  departed  Bard  make  moan. 


vi  THE  AESTHETIC  QUALITIES  129 

Coleridge's  lines  are  only  true  if  they  are  understood,  as 
they  may  be  understood,  to  mean  that  unless  we  bring  the 
seeing  eye,  we  shall  not  see  the  vision.  All  idealism  teaches 
the  correlativity  of  subject  and  object;  they  develop  pari 
passu,  keeping  step  together,  inasmuch  as  the  objective 
world  seems  to  grow  in  richness  as  we  develop  faculties  to 
apprehend  it.  But  all  sane  idealism  teaches  that,  in  such 
advance,  the  subject  is  not  creating  new  worlds  of  knowl- 
edge and  appreciation  for  himself,  but  learning  to  see  more 
of  the  one  world,  '  which  is  the  world  of  all  of  us  '. 

Philosophy  does  not  require  us,  then,  to  treat  the  beauty 
and  sublimity  of  natural  objects  as  subjective  emotions 
in  the  bystander :  we  are  entitled,  on  the  principles  I  have 
been  advocating,  to  treat  them  as  qualities  of  the  object 
just  as  much  as  the  vaunted  primary  qualities. 

There  was  an  awful  rainbow  once  in  heaven; 
We  know  her  woof  and  texture ;  she  is  given 
In  the  dull  catalogue  of  common  things. 

Keats  attributes  this  result  to  '  cold  philosophy ',  at  whose 
mere  touch  all  charms  fly.  The  poet's  complaint  is  that  a 
knowledge  of  physical  optics — the  laws  of  refraction  and 
so  forth — reduces  the  rainbow  to  an  illusion,  by  showing 
us  the  mechanism  on  which  the  beautiful  phenomenon 
depends.  Keats,  in  fact,  momentarily  accepts  the  popular 
scientific  view  that  this  physical  mechanism  is  the  reality 
of  the  rainbow;  and  as  a  poet  he  mourns  his  lost  illusion. 
But  that  is  the  abstraction  against  which  our  whole  argu 
ment  has  been  a  protest.  The  reality  of  the  rainbow  in 

But  Scott  knows  that  they  do  err,  and  that  he  is  merely  playing  with 
fancies,  for  he  acknowledges  it  himself  in  the  next  stanza : 

Not  that,  in  sooth,  o'er  mortal  urn 

Those  things  inanimate  can  mourn. 

How  different  from  this  the  transfiguring  touch  of  the  Wordsworthian 
imagination,  even  when  it  seems  to  involve  a  similar  transference  of 
emotion : 

The  moon  doth  with  delight 

Look  round  her  when  the  heavens  are  bare. 


: 


130  MAN  ORGANIC  TO  THE  WORLD  vi 

eludes  that  very  shimmer  of  lovely  colour  and  the  wonderful 
aesthetic  suggestion  which  made  the  primitive  poet  calljj 
God's  bow  in  the  clouds,  and  which  still  makes  our  hearts 

' 

'  leap  up  '  when  we  behold  it  in  the  sky.  Things  are  as  they 
reveal  themselves  in  their  fullness  to  the  knowing  mind.. 
As  a  French  thinker  expresses  it,  'if  we  wish  to  form  a 
true  idea  of  the  total  fact,  of  the  real,  we  must  not  eliminate 
from  it  precisely  what  completes  reality,  what  makes  it 
exist  for  itself  V 

1  A.  Fouillee,  Evolutionnisme  des  Idees-forces,  p.  279. 


LECTURE  VII 
ETHICAL  MAN.    THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY 

THE  last  lecture  elaborated  the  contention  that  man  is 
to  be  taken  as  organic  to  the  world,  and  his_exrjerience, 
therefore,  in  all  its  reaches,  as  a  process  by  which  trie  true " 
nature  of  reality  communicates  itself  to  him.  The_  terror 
of  the  subjective,  as  M.  Fouillee  happily  puts  it,  is  an  obses- 
sion introduced  into  philosophy  by  Kant.  If  it  was  not 
exactly  '  introduced  '  by  Kant,  it  was  certainly  intensified  by 
his  method  of  statement.  I  attempted  to  show  the  inherent 
absurdity  of  the  position  that,  because  knowledge  is  the  result 
of  a  process,  the  truth  of  its  report  is  thereby  invalidated. 
Because,  in  order  to  be  known,  things  must  appear  to  the 
knowing  subject,  it  surely  does  not  follow,  as  Kant  seems 
naively  to  assume,  that  they  appear  as  they  are  not.  Yet  it 
is  due  to  this  presupposition  that  the  relation  between  the 
thing-in-itself  and  the  phenomenon  becomes  the  negative 
one  of  contrast  or  difference,  and  forms  the  fundamental 
opposition  on  which  the  Kantian  system  is  based.1  On  the 
view  I  have  advocated,  the  relation  between  reality  and  ap- 
pearance is  not  this  negative  relation  of  contrast  or  differ- 
ence ;jhe  thing  really  does  appear,  or,  in  other  words^  reveal 
its  nature.  The  thing  as  it  is  and  the  thing  as  it  appears 
are,  in  principle,  the  same  fact  differently  named,  because 
Jooked  at  in  different  aspects.  They  may  be  intelligibly 
contrasted  in  so  far  as  our  knowledge  is  partial  and  does 
not  therefore  exhaust  the  nature  of  the  object  in  question, 

1  As  Hegel  wittily  puts  it,  Kant  holds  that  what  we  think  is  false, 
because  it  is  we  who  think  it  (Encyclopddie,  section  60,  Wallace's  trans- 
lation, p.  119). 


I32          THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

but  not  in  the  Kantian  and  agnostic  sense  that,  even  as 
regards  the  part  we  know,  the  thing  would  look  quite 
different  if,  per  impossibile,  we  could  see  it  as  it  really  is. 
The  whole  conception  of  reality  as  meaning  existence  apart 
from  being  known,  and  the  accompanying  theory  of  truth  as 
lying  in  the  correspondence  of  knowledge  with  what  is  by 
definition  unknowable — this  whole  conception,  with  the 
agnosticism  inherent  in  its  very  statement,  is  swept  away 
by  the  view  which  I  have  been  urging.  That  view  abolishes 
the  thing-in-itself  in  the  Kantian  sense;  or,  if  the  term  is 
retained,  it  teaches  that, the  reality  of  the  thing  is  not  the 
thing  apart  from  knowledge,  but  the  thing  conceived  as 
completely  known,  the  thing  as  it  would  appear  in  its  com- 
plete setting  to  a  perfect  intelligence.  Mind  is  thus  no  more 
condemned,  as  it  were,  to  circle  round  the  circumference 
of  the  real  world,  put  off  with  outside  shows,  and  unable 
to  penetrate  to  its  essential  core.  Mind  is  set  in  the  heart 
of  the  world;  it  is  itself  the  centre  in  which  the  essential 
nature  of  the  whole  reveals  itself. 

So  far  we  have  treated  the  question  of  man's  organic 
relation  to  the  world  with  almost  exclusive  reference  to 
his  cognitive  experience  of  the  external  world.  That  is 
the  connexion  in  which  the  question  arises  in  modern 
philosophy,  and  it  had  to  be  first  disposed  of,  for  the  reason 
stated  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  lecture.  If  man's  knowl- 
edge, I  said,  does  not  put  him  in  touch  with  realityTTiow 
£an  his  ideals  be  supposed  to  furnish  a  clue?  In  the  con- 
cluding pages  of  the  lecture  we  applied  the  principle  of 
organic  relation  to  the  aesthetic  aspects  of  our  experience. 
But  it  is,  as  we  have  seen  throughout,  jffiween  roan's  nature 
as  an  ethical  being  and  what  is  taken  to  be  the  completely 
non-moral  nature  of  the  world  from  which  he  springs,  that 
the  cleavage,  the  apparent  break  of  continuity,  has  usually 
been  most  keenly  felt.  I  have  already  referred  to  Huxley's 
passionate  indictment  of  '  cosmic  nature '  as  not  only  '  no 


vii  ETHICAL  MAN  AND  NATURE  133 

school  of  virtue  but  the  headquarters  of  the  enemy  of 
ethical  nature '.  Man  is  thus,  in  his  moral  nature,  so  far 
from  being  organic  to  the  universe  that,  in  such  a  view,  his 
noblest  qualities  are  a  reversal  of  all  its  ways.  Man  is  at 
odds  with  the  cosmos :  it  is  open  war  between  them.  LLet 
us  understand,  once  for  all,  that  the  ethical  progress  of 
society  depends  not  on  imitating  the  cosmic  process,  still 
less  in  running,  away  from  it,  but  in  combating  it.'  With 
this  characteristic  call  to  arms  the  deeply-felt  address 
concludes.1 

A  similar  sense  of  dualism,  and  even  of  conflict,  between 
ethical  man  and  cosmic  nature  underlies  the  Religion  of 
Hninaqfty  as  formulated  by  Comte.  In  this  respect  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  prod- 
ucts of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  an  ethical  and 
religious  idealism  of  a  lofty  type;  but  it  is  an  idealism 
manque — an  idealism  truncated  and  imperfect — because 
infected  by  the  agnostic  relativism  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  characteristic  of  the  period.  There  are  many  parallels 
between  Qomte  and  Kant,  both  in  the  positive  and  the 
negative  aspects  of  their  work,  although  Comte  knew  his 
German  predecessor  only  at  second-hand  and  reached  his 
own  conclusions  independently.  To  both  the  moral  is  the 
foundation  of  intrinsic  value,  and  both  make  the  moral 
development  of  mankind  the  central  point  of  reference  in 
their  systems.  ^And,  again,  the  doctrine  of  the  phenome- 
nality  or  relativity  of  knowledge  drives  a  wedge  deep  into 
the  philosophy  of  both.  If  Kant  in  some  degree  extricates 
himself  from  his  dualism,  or  at  least  shows  others  a  way 
out,  Comte's  religious  philosophy  remains  to  the  end,  what 
he  explicitly  designates  it,  a  '  subjective  synthesis  '- — a 
synthesis  of  humanity,  that  is  to  say,  which  leaves  the 
rest  of  the  universe  out  of  account.  An  attempt  to  disen- 
tangle the  true  and  the  false  in  Comte's  statement  of  the 
1  Romanes  Lecture  on  Evolution  and  Ethics,  1893. 


I34         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

philosophical  and  religious  position  will  prove,  I  think,  as 
instructive  a  method  as  we  could  adopt  of  carrying  our  own 
argument  to  its  conclusion  and  illuminating  the  nature 
of  the  position  to  which  the  preceding  lectures  have  been 
leading  up.  There  is,  besides,  so  much  that  is  true  and 
valuable  in  Comte's  ideas  that  I  am  not  unwilling  to  dwell 
for  a  little  on  a  system  of  thought  which  has  perhaps  been 
treated  by  constructive  thinkers  in  this  country  too  exclu- 
sively in  its  negative  aspects. 

The  negative  element  in  Comte's  philosophy  connects 
itself  with  his  famous  '  law  of  the  three  stages-'  of  human 
thought.  Man  begins  by  explaining  events  as  the  results 
of  volitions  like  his  own;  this  is  the  ^theological  stage  of 
^thought,  leading  from  Fetishism  through  Polytheism  to 
Monotheism.  When  the  insight  into  the  uniformity  of 
nature's  processes  makes  the  resort  to  interfering  wills  un- 
meaning, theology  is  supplanted  by  nieta^hy&ics^  which 
finds  the  causal  explanation  of  events  in  essences  or  powers, 
conceived  as  real  entities  behind  and  separate  from  the 
phenomena  which  they  dominate.  Such  an  essence,  power, 
or  faculty,  is  so  manifestly  just  the  duplicate  of  the  phe- 
nomenon which  it  is  invoked  to  explain,  that  it  might  be 
difficult  to  understand  how  such  pure  abstractions  came  to 
be  substantiated,  if  we  did  not  remember  that  the  meta- 
physical stage  was  preceded  by  the  theological.  The 
essence  is  the  ghost  or  residuum  of  the  spirit  which  was 
formerly  believed  to  control  the  fact.  As  Mill  puts  it, 
'  the  realization  of  abstractions  was  not  the  embodiment 
of  a  word,  but  the  gradual  disembodiment  of  a  fetish  V 
The  metaphysical  stage  is  thus  essentially  transitional  and 
yields  place  in  the  fullness  of  time  to  the  third,  the  posi- 
tive or  purely  scientific  stage.  Here  thought  givesTup  the 
search  after  transcendent  causes,  and  limits  itself  to  in- 
vestigating the  laws  of  phenomena,  that  is  to  say,  the 
1  Auguste  Comte  and  Positivism,  p.  18. 


vii         COMTE'S  IDEA  OF  METAPHYSICS         135 

relations  of  resemblance,  co-existence  and  sequence  which 
obtain  between  different  natural  facts.  Such  a  knowledge 
enables  us  to  foresee  the  course  of  phenomena :  voir  pour 
prevoir  is  the  motto  of  science.  Foresight  means  the  possi- 
bility of  controlling  the. course  of  phenomena  or,  at  least, 
of  adapting  our  conduct  to  what  we  cannot  change.  And, 
as  Comte  strongly  holds,  science  realizes  its  true  function 
in  the  service  of  human  life.  With  the  spread  of  the  positive 
or  truly  scientific  spirit,  theological  and  metaphysical  debates 
will  die  a  natural  death,  without  the  need  of  any  explicit 
demonstration  of  the  unreality  of  the  conceptions  on  which 
they  are  based. 

It  is  a  fundamental  tenet,  therefore,  of  the  Positivist 
philosophy  that  our  knowledge  is  only  of  phenomena  and  _ 
their  laws.  Comte  also  uses  the  term  relative  to  describe 
the  nature  of  his  position,  referring  with  approbation  to 
Kant's  distinction  of  the  subjective  and  objective  elements 
in  knowledge.  Although  we  can  eliminate  the  subjective 
peculiarities  which  belong  to  us  as  individuals,  we  cannot 
rise  above  the  subjectivity  which  is  common  to  our  species 
as  a  whole ;  and,  accordingly,  '  our  conceptions  can  never 
attain  to  a  pure  objectivity.  It  is  therefore  as  impossible 
as  it  is  useless  to  determine  exactly  the  respective  contri- 
butions of  the  internal  and  the  external  in  the  production 
of  knowledge.' 1 

The  criticism  which  I  would  offer  of  this  position  is,  in 
sum,  that^it  conveys  a  false  idea  of  what  metaphysics  con- 
sists in,  and  that  it  depends  itself  upon  the  false  idea  which 
it  repudiates.  Comte  adopts  the  view  of  the  ordinary 
empiricist  that  the  metaphysician  or  the  transcendental 
philosopher  is  ceaselessly  employed  in  the  quest  or  elabora- 
tion of  transcendent  noumena,  which  are  really  duplicates 
of  the  facts  to  be  explained.  There  have  been,  doubtless, 
historical  examples  of  such  a  procedure— 1«  be  treated  as 
1  Positive  Polity,  vol.  ii,  p.  30  (English  translation). 


136         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

beacons  of  warning — but  it  is  ludicrous  to  attribute  it  to 
the  greater  philosophers.  ^^Metaphysics  is  simply  the  atte 
to  think  things  out — to  exhibit  the  relation  of  the  facts  t<> 
one  another  and  thereby  to  reduce  them  finally  to  a  coherent 
system.  To  do  this  is  to  disclose  the  informing  principle 
of  the  whole.  Certainly,  whatever  may  be  true  of  the  past, 
idealistic  philosophy  since  Kant  has  been  mainly  engaged 
in  exploding  the  notion  on  which  Comte  proceeds,  that  the 
phenomenon  and  the  noumenon  are  two  separate  facts,  or 
that  the  reality  is  something  apart  and  different  from 
its  appearances.  I  have  said  that  Comte  proceeds  on  this 
notion  because,  although  he  dismisses  as  false  the  explana- 
tions which  he  takes  to  be  proffered  by  the  metaphysician, 
and  himself  abandons  the  metaphysical  quest,  it  is  appar- 
ently because  of  the  impotence  of  our  faculties  that  he  does 
so,  and  not  on  account  of  the  falsity  inherent  in  such  a 
statement  of  the  philosophical  problem.  He  speaks  of  the 
'  insolubility  '  of  the  question  much  in  the  style  of  Kant, 
and  his  characterization  of  our  knowledge  as  '  only  of 
phenomena  '  seems  to  rest  on  similar  grounds.  Otherwise 
why  the  regretful  'only'?  'For  the  assertion  that  we 
know  only  phenomena/  says  Caird,1  '  has  no  meaning 
except  in  reference  to  the  doctrine  that  there  are,  or  can 
by  us  be  conceived  to  be,  things  in  themselves,  i.  e.  things 
unrelated  to  thought;  and  that  while  we  know  them  to 
exist,  we  cannot  know  what  they  are.  Now  this  dogma  is 
simply  the  scholastic  realism,  or  what  Comte  calls  meta- 
physics, in  its  most  abstract  and  irrational  form.  It  is  a 
residuum  of  bad  metaphysics,  which  by  a  natural  nemesis 
seems  almost  invariably  to  haunt  the  minds  of  those  writers 
who  think  they  have  renounced  metaphysics  altogether.' 
The  misconceptions  involved  in  the  imputation  of  relativity 
have  been  sufficiently  dealt  with  in  the  preceding  lecture. 
Obviously  the  quaint  idea  of  '  apportioning  exactly  the 
1  The  Social  Philosophy  of  Comte,  p.  121, 


vii  CENTRAL  PLACE  OF  RELIGION  137 

respective  contributions  of  the  internal  and  the  external 
in  the  production  of  knowledge  '  derives  any  plausibility 
it  possesses  from  the  conception  of  the  knowing  subject 
as  entirely  outside  the  world  he  seeks  to  know.  To  this 
original  denial  of  an  organic  relation  between  man  and  the 
rest  of  the  cosmos  are  traceable,  we  shall  find,  the  charac- 
teristic features  of  Comte's  social  and  religious  doctrines. 
But  let  us  first  consider  the  truths  which  these  doctrines 
contain. 

Comte  is  strongly  impressed  by  the  central  function  of 
religion  in  human  experience  Religion,  he_says,*  embraces 
the  whole  of  our  existence,  and  the  history  of  religion  re- 
sumes the  entire  history  of  human  development.  Irireligion 
man  attains  harmony  of  life  through  recognition  of  his 
dependence  on  a  Power  which  sustains  and  encompasses 
his  life — a  Being  whom  he  can  worship  and  love,  as  the 


source  and  embodiment  of  all  that  is  adorable,  and  as  the 
sustaining  providence  to  which  he  owes  every  good  that  he 
enjoys.  We  must  love  the  Power  to  which  we  submit; 
otherwise  there  is  nothing  religious  in  our  submission, 
nothing  but  resignation  to  a  fatality.  Further,  Comte 
rightly  holds  that  only  in  the  moral  affections  are  there 
revealed  to  us  qualities  to  which  we  can  bow  in  worship  and 
in  love.  The  external  world,  regarded  by  itself  and  in  its 
merely  mechanical  aspects,  possesses,  as  we  have  seen,  no 
intrinsic  value.  Taken  in  abstraction,  as  Comte  takes  it, 
it  is,  indeed,  just  what  he  calls  it,  a  fatality  with  which  we 
have  to  make  our  account,  but  in  nowise  a  Power  moving 
us  either  to  gratitude  or  to  worship.  Size  counts  for  nothing 
in  such  an  estimate.  It  is  the  insight  of  religion  and  of  the 
deepest  philosophy  that  size  has  nothing  to  do  with  true 
greatness.  Pascal's  ^thinking  reed '  is  greater  in  death 
than  the  universe  which  overwhelms  him.  Comte's 
Religion  of  Humanity  has  the  same  thought  at  its  root.  As 

1  Positive  Polity,  vol.  ii,  p.  119 


138         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  finely  illustrates  it :  '  The  man  who 
reviles  Humanity  on  the  ground  of  its  small  place  in  the 
scale  of  the  Universe  is  the  kind  of  man  who  sneers  at 
patriotism  and  sees  nothing  great  in  England,  on  the  ground 
that  our  island  holds  so  small  a  place  in  the  map  of  the 
world.  On  the  atlas  England  is  but  a  dot.  Morally  and 
spiritually,  our  Fatherland  is  our  glory,  our  cradle  and  our 
grave.' l 

Comte  has  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  the  individual 
man,  alike  in  his  intelligence,  his  activities  and  his  affec- 
tions, is  the  creature  and  the  organ  of  the  race  to  which 
ic  belongs.  The  language  he  speaks,  the  intellectual  tools 
ic  uses,  the  moral  qualities  of  self-restraint,  co-operation 
md  mutual  affection,  all  come  to  him  as  a  heritage  from 
the  past.  Quite  as  much  as  the  material  appliances  of 
'civilization  which  soften  and  humanize  his  lot,  raising  him 
above  the  grim  struggle  with  external  nature,  they  repre- 
sent the  collective  labours  of  unrecorded  generations  since 
the  dim  dawn  of  human  history.  Thus  the  very  tissue  of 
his  life  is  woven  for  him  by  the  collective  activities  of  the 
race,  which  Comte  conceives  as  one  great  Organism  or 
living  Being,  whose  existence  is  continuous  throughout 
time,  and  which  contains,  at  least  in  a  mystical  sense,  its^ 
dead  as  well  as  its  living  and  its  still  unborn  members  in 
one  great  fellowship.2  In  other  organisms,  Comte  proceeds^ 
the  parts  have  no  existence  when  severed  from  the  whole, 
but  this  greatest  of  all  organisms  is  made  up  of  lives  which 
can  really  be  separated.  ^TTiimanjty _..wonH  rpagp  fap  says, 
to  be  superior  to  other  beings  were  it  possible  for  her__ 


1  Creed  of  a  Layman,  p.  76. 

* '  This  mighty  Being  whose  life  endures  through  all  time,  and  who  is 
formed  of  the  dead  far  more  than  of  the  living '  (General  View  of  Posi- 
tivism, p.  235,  Bridges'  translation).  The  present  is  but  a  span  or  a  sec- 
tion between  the  past  and  the  future.  It  '  can  only  be  properly  conceived 
by  the  aid  of  the  two  extremes  which  it  unites  and  separates '  (Positive 
Polity,  vol.  ii,  p.  296). 


vii        THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE         139 


tn  hprnmp  in.spparahW  Independence  is  neces- 
sary as  well  as  harmony  or  co-operation;  but  the  difficulty 
of  reconciling  them  is  so  great  as  to  account  at  once  for 
the  slowness  with  which  this  highest  of  all  organisms 
has  been  developed.1  We  must  not,  however,  in  speaking 
thus  of  independence,  lapse  from  the  organic  point  of 
view  ;  for  Comte  immediately  reminds  us  that  '  man  as 
an  individual  cannot  properly  be  said  to  exist  except  in 
the  exaggerated  abstractions  of  modern  metaphysicians. 
Existence  in  the  true  sense  can  be  predicated  only  of 
Humanity;  although  the  complexity  of  her  nature  pre- 
vented men  from  forming  a  systematic  conception  of  it 
until  the  necessary  stages  of  scientific  initiation  had  been 
passed.' 

^umanity,  therefore,  becomes  for  the  individual  the 
object  of  religious  adoration,  the  Great  Being  towards  which 
every  aspect  of  his  life  is  directed.  '  Our  thoughts  will  be 
devoted  to  the  knowledge  of  Humanity,  our  affections  to  her 
love,  ouj  actions  tn  her  service.!  ___  Humanity  is  the  Provi- 
dence which  mediates  between  its  members  and  the  system 
of  external  necessity  which  forms  our  environment,  turning 
its  very  fatality  into  a  means  of  moral  development  and  self- 
perfection.  To  Humanity,  therefore,  is  due  the  gratitude 
for  all  the  benefits  for  which,  in  the  past,  men  have  mis- 
takenly poured  out  their  thanks  to  an  abstraction  of  their 
own  invention.  Unlike  the  Supreme  Being  of  the  old 
religions,  Humanity  is  an  object  of  worship  whose  existence 
is  patent  and  indubitable,  whose  nature  and  the  laws  of 
whose  existence  we  know  —  a  Being,  moreover,  whom  we 
can  actively  serve  and  really  benefit.  The  beneficial  and 
moralizing  influence  of  the  old  theology  in  its  day  and  gen- 
eration Comte  willingly  acknowledges,  especially  mentioning 
the  Christian  doctrtfie  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  worship 
of  the  Virgin.  But  its  function  was,  in  his  view,  merely 

1  General  View,  p.  246. 


I4o          THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY         LECT. 

transitional  and  preparatory — '  to  direct  provisionally  the 
evolution  of  our  best  feelings  under  the  regency  of  God 
during  the  long  minority  of  Humanity.'  1  '  Monotheism  in 
Western  Europe  is  now  as  obsolete  and  as  injurious—as 
Polytheism  was  fifteen  centuries  ago.  .  .  .  The  sole  effect  of 
its  doctrine  is  to  degrade  the  affections  by  unlimited  desires, 
and  to  weaken  the  character  by  servile  terrors.'  Humanity 
is  not  omnipotent,  and  therefore  we  do  not  expect  from  it 
the  impossible.  '  We  know  well  that  the  great  Organism, 
superior  though  it  be  to  all  beings  known  to  us,  is  yet  under 
*fhe  dominion  of  inscrutable  laws,  and  is  in  no  respect  either 
'  absolutely  perfect  or  absolutely  secure  from  danger.'  But 
just  on  that  account  religion  does  not  exhaust  itself  in 
adoration ;  it  finds  its  actual  expression  in  the  active  service 
of  Humanity.  .Immutable  omnipotence  had  no  need  of 
human  services,  but  Humanity,  '  the  most  vital  of  all 
living  beings  known  to  us,  lives  and  grows  only  through  the 
unceasing  efforts  of  its  members.'  Humanity  is  so  far  from 
being  perfect  that  *  we  study  her  natural  defects  with  care, 
in  order  to  remedy  them  as  far  as  possible.  Thus  the  love 
we  bear  her  calls  for  no  degrading  expressions  of  adulation, 
but  it  inspires  us  with  unremitting  zeal  for  moral  improve- 
ment.' To  the  Pogi|ivist.  therefore,  Mife  becomes  a  con- 
tinuous act  of  worship,  performed  under  the  inspiration  of 
universal  Love.  All  our  thoughts,  feelings  and  actions  flo^w 
spontaneously  towards  a  common  centre  in  Humanity,  one 
Supreme  Being — a  Being  who  is  real,  accessible  and  sympa- 
thetic, because  she  is  of  the  same  nature  as  her  worshippers.' 
The  history  of  the  long  travail  of  Humanity,  '  her  constant 
struggle  against  painful  fatalities  which  have  at  last  become 

1  Quoted  by  Caird,  op.  cit.,  p.  32.    Cf.  Swinburne's  Hertha: 
1  that  saw  where  ye  trod 

The  dim  paths  of  the  night, 
Set  the  shadow  called  God 

In  your  skies  to  give  light; 
But  the  morning  of  manhood  is  risen,  and  the  shadowless  soul  is  in  sight. 


vii        IS  HUMANITY  AN  ABSTRACTION?         141 

a  source  of  happiness  and  greatness,  the  history  of  the! 
advance  of  man  from  brutal  appetite  to  pure  unselfish  f 
sympathy,  is  an  endless  theme  for  the  poetry  of  the' 
future.'  Positivism  offers  us  '  a  religion  clothed  in;, 
all  the  beauty  of  Art  and  yet  never  inconsistent  with 
Science  V 

Such  are  Comte's  claims  for  the  new  faith  of  which  in  his 
later  years  he  constituted  himself  the  high-priest.  Qne 
valuable  truth  in  the  philosophical  ground  work— a  truth 
not  peculiar  to  Comte,  though  he  had  an  important  influence 
in  impressing  it  on  modern  thought — :is  the  repudiation  of 
the  abstract  individualism  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
the  insistence  on  the  concrete  reality  of  humanity  as  a  uni- 
versal life  in  which  individual  men. are  sharers.  Individual 
man  is  an  abstraction  of  the  metaphysicians,  Comte  tells  us; 
he  cannot  properly  be  said  to  exist,  if  severed  from  the  com- 
munity of  this  larger  life.  Now  we  are  all  of  us  Nominalists 
in  our  ordinary  moods,  and  too  apt  to  ridicule  such  a  state- 
ment as  a  piece  of  fantastic  mysticism.  Accordingly,  it  is 
a  common  criticism  of  Comte  that  he  sets  up  an  abstraction 
Jfor  us  to  worship.  But  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to 
say  that,  by  such  a  line  of  criticism,  we  cut  ourselves  off 
from  religion  altogether,  and,  with  religion,  from  sound 
philosophy.^  The  mystical  union  of  the  worshipper  with  his 
God  is  a  cardinal  article  of  religious  faith.  If.  humanity, 
as  a  universal,  is  to  be  dismissed  as  an  abstraction,  may 
not  God,  the  supreme  universal,  succumb  to  a  similar 
criticism? 

Before  taking  up  this  Philistine  attitude,  let  us  apply  the 
same  test  to  the  narrower  case  of  patriotism,2  whose  more 
vivid  associations  may  perhaps  help  us  to  appreciate  the 


1  The  passages  quoted  are  all  taken  from  the  concluding  chapter  of  the 
General  View  of  Positivism. 

*  This  paragraph  was  written  two  years  before  the  war,  and  I  have 
thought  it  best  to  let  it  stand  exactly  as  it  was  spoken. 


I42         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY         LECT. 

reality  of  the  larger  and   more  passionless  unity.     Take 
Shakespeare's  famous  apostrophe  to  England : 
This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea  .  .  . 
This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England. 
Or  Browning's  '  Home-Thoughts,  from  the  Sea  ' : 

Nobly,  nobly  Cape  Saint  Vincent  to  the  north-west  died 

away; 

Sunset  ran,  one  glorious  blood-red,  reeking  into  Cadiz  Bay ; 
Bluish  'mid  the  burning  water,  full  in  face  Trafalgar  lay; 
In  the  dimmest  north-east  distance  dawned  Gibraltar  grand 

and  gray; 
"  Here  and  here  did  England  help  me :  how  can  I  help 

England  ?  " — say, 
Whoso  turns  as  I,  this  evening,  turn  to  God  to  praise  and 

pray, 

While  Jove's  planet  rises  yonder,  silent  over  Africa. 
Or  these  lines  of  a  younger  poet : 

Never  the  lotus  closes,  never  the  wild-fowl  wake, 
But  a  soul  goes  out  on  the  East  Wind  that  died  for  Eng- 
land's sake. 

Is  England,  then,  an  abstraction?  Was  Italy  an  abstrac- 
tion to  the  Italian  patriots  who  fought  for  her  freedom  and 
unity  in  the  middle  of  last  century?  'jtalyj.  Mazzini  said, 
*js  itself  §  religion. '  Was  Israel  an  abstraction  to  the  pious 
Jew?  Nay,  \ve  know  that  he  thought  and  spoke  of  Israel 
in  the  very  terms  which  Comte  applies  to  Humanity^  as  the 
great  Being  to  whom  the  promises  of  Jehovah  are  made  and 
in  whom  his  purposes  are  fulfilled  He  himself  will  be 
gathered  to  his  fathers,  but  Israel,  '  the  servant  of  the  Lord,' 
enjoys  an  age-long  life.  Ancient  Israel  is,  in  this  respect, 
only  the  best-known  example — touched  to  the  finest  issues — 
of  a  familiar  historical  fact.  The  individual,  it  has  been 
said,  is  a  late  product  of  evolution.  At  an  earlier  stage  he  is 
largely  merged  in  the  tribal  life ;  he  does  not  round  himself 
to  a  separate  whole,  with  the  modern  sense  of  individual 
detachment  and  personal  destiny.  He  acts  as  the  organ  of 


vii          THE  ANALOGY  OF  PATRIOTISM  143 

a  larger  life  in  which  he  is  content  to  be,  and  apart  from 
which  he  makes  no  personal  claims.  The  grqwth  of  in<ji- 
vidual  sqjf-mnsrirmsness  undoubtedly  marks  an  advance, 
As  Comte  rightly  points  out,  it  is  a  mark  of  the  perfection 
of  the  greatest  of  all  organisms  that  the  parts  of  which  it 
consists  are  living  beings  which  have  an  existence  for  them- 
selves. But  however  far  such  development  may  go,  it  can 
never  mean  that  the  individuals  detach  themselves  alto- 
gether from  the  nation  or  the  race,  and  cease  to  be  channels 
of  the  corporate  life  which  makes  them  men.  .They  cannot 
place  themselves  outside  the  '  little  world '  of  man  and  con- 
tinue to  exist,  any  more  than  they  can  take  up  an  inde- 
pendent station  outside  the  universe  of  which  they  are  the 
product  and  the  organ. 

May  we  not  also  explain  by  the  analogy  of  patriotism 
Comte's  idealization  of  Humanity?  How  can  we  worship 
(it  is  often  said),  or  even  reverence  and  love,  a  Being  with 
such  a  history — a  Being,  great  masses  of  whose  members 
offer,  even  now,  such  a  spectacle  of  pettiness  and  folly,  of 
grossness,  baseness  and  all  manner  of  wickedness?  Alas, 
is  it  not  the  same  when  we  turn  our  thoughts  from  the 
patriot's  '  England  '  to  our  countrymen  in  the  flesh  ?  How 
much  that  is  vulgar  and  mean  and  vicious  crowds  with 
pain  and  shame  upon  the  mind!  Yet,  though  we  may  be 
chastened  and  humbled — and  inspired,  as  Comte  also  says, 
with  zeal  to  make  these  things  better — the  features  of  our 
ideal  are  not  blurred.  Ideal  England  still  stands  before  us 
as  supremely  real,  the  just  object  of  our  unstinted  devotion, 
sacred  to  us  as  a  heritage  from  all  the  brave  and  good  who 
have  laboured  in  her  service,  a  fabric  strong  enough  to  bear, 
and,  as  it  were,  to  redeem  or  transmute,  the  weakness  and 
the  evil  which  mingle  with  all  human  things.  In  a  spiritual 
organism  the  evil  is  thrown  off  and  perishes ;  the  good  only 
remains  and  is  incorporated,  to  become  the  substance  of  the 
future.  So,  with  Comte,  it  is  Humanity  in  its  ideal  aspect  that 


144         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

is  offered  for  our  worship — Humanity  purged  of  its  own 
dross,  militant,  indeed,  not  perfect,  but  triumphant  over  the 
baser  elements  in  its  constitution,  transforming  obstacles 
into  stepping-stones  of  progress  and  replacing  the  life  of 
selfish  struggle  by  one  of  universal  sympathy  and  mutual 
help.  And  it  is  plain,  as  Seeley  says,  that  ^the  worship  of 
Humanity  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  Christianity  itself. 
and  only  becomes  heretical  in  the  modern  system  by  beiag 
separated  from  the  worship  of  Deity'.1  ^.s  Blake  puts  it, 
with  a  kind  of  divine  simplicity,  in  his  Songs  of  Innocence: 

For  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace  and  Love 

Is  God  our  Father  dear, 
And  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace  and  Love 

Is  Man  His  child  and  care. 

For  Mercy  has  a  human  heart, 

Pity  a  human  face, 
And  Love  the  human  form  divine, 

And  Peace  the  human  dress. 

The  Religion  of  Humanity  does,  indeed,  emphasize 
elements  which  are  essential  in  the  Christian  view  of  God 
and  the  world,  but  which  have  often  been  neutralized, 
especially  in  theological  systems,  by  the  predominance  of 
the  old  monarchical  idea  of  God,  conceived,  in  William 
James's  happy  phrase,  as  'a  sort  of  Louis  XIV  of 
the  heavens '.  ,  But,  presented  as  Comte  presents  it,  as  a 
substitute  for  the  worship  of  God,  the  worship  of  a  finite 
Being,  however  great,  offers  insuperable  philosophical  diffi- 
culties. Most  people  will  think,  with  Hoffding,  *  that  the 
religious  problem  proper  only  begins  where  Comte's  religion 
ends,  viz.  with  the  question  as  to  how  the  development  of  the 
world  is  related  to  that  of  the  human  race  and  the  human 
ideal.'2  It  is  time  to  return,  therefore,  to  consider  the 
'  subjectivity  '  of  the  Positivist  synthesis. 

1  Natural  Religion,  p.  75  (second  edition). 

'History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  ii.  359  (English  translation). 


vii  A  SUBJECTIVE  SYNTHESIS  145 

To  judge  from  his  own  language,  Comte  appears  to  con- 
sider the  subjective  and  relative  character  of  his  synthesis 
a  merit  rather  than  a  defect.  But  to  fail  of  the  objective 
and  the  absolute,  while  it  may  doubtless  be  inevitable 
must  certainly,  just  to  the  extent  of  the  failure,  be  pro 
nounced  a  defect.  Comte's  attitude,  therefore,  can  only  bi 
held  as  meaning  that,  since,  in  his  view,  objective  knowl- 
edge is  unattainable,  it  is  better  to  rest  satisfied  with  a 
result  which  honestly  proclaims  itself  subjective  than  to 
pretend  to  a  final  synthesis  which  is  beyond  our  powers. 
The  peculiarity  of  Comte's  scheme,  however,  is  that  it 
entirely  depends  on  treating  Humanity  as  a  self-contained 
and  self -creative  being — a  kind  of  finite  Absolute — which 
evolves  all  its  properties,  and  engineers  all  its  advance,  out 
of  the  resources  of  its  own  nature.  Hence  it  comes  that  at 
the  end  he  crowns  it  as  God  in  a  godless  world.  Comte, 
of  course,  does  not  fail  to  recognize  that  Humanity  is  not 
literally  self-contained,  but  develops  in  a  '  medium '  or 
environment  furnished  by  the  external  or  physical  world. 
Indeed  he  lays  stress  on  the  fact  that  his  synthesis  *  rests 
at  every  point  upon-lhe  unchangeable  order  of  the  world  ', 
as  revealed  by  science ; l  he  calls  this  the^bjectiye^basis  of__ 
his  synthesis.  It  is  the  function  of  intellect  to  discover  the 
laws  of  this  universal  order,  teaching  us  how  to  modify  the 
course  of  phenomena  when  that  is  possible,  or,  when  that 
is  not  the  case,  to  adapt  ourselves  to  an  inevitable  necessity. 
And  the  social  education  of  the  race  depends  also,  as  he 
shows,2  upon  the  ever-present  consciousness  of  this  external 
power  and  the  coercions  of  its  unchanging  laws.  But,  in 
spite  of  the  dependence  thus  acknowledged,  he  still  proceeds, 
in  building  up  his  theory,  as  if  there  were  no  organic  relation 
between  man  and  the  world  which  gives  him  birth.  'JELx-_^ 
Jernal  fatality  '  is  the  phrase  he  most  commonly  uses  of  the 
non-human  world :  it  appears  in  the  light  of  a  hostile  power 
1  General  View,  p.  19.  2  Ibid.,  p.  253. 


I46         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

with  which  humanity  is  in  conflict,  rather  than  as  an  integral 
element  in  the  single  universe  which  we  have  to  explain.  In 
spite  of  his  instructive  classification  of  the  sciences  and 
his  polemic  against  the  '  materialism  ',  as  he  calls  it,  which 
seeks  to  reduce  the  higher  to  the  lower,  Comte's  deification 
of  Humanity  really  depends  on  the  same  practical  severance 
of  man  from  nature  and  the  acceptance  of  the  latter  as  a 
self-contained  system  of  physical  necessity.  The  difference 
is  that,  whereas  materialism  treats  man  as  an  evanescent 
product  of  cosmic  nature,  the  idealist  in  Comte  celebrates  in 
Humanity  the  only  object  of  religious  reverence  and  love, 
and  nature  tends  with  him  to  take  a  secondary  place.  It 
is  a  necessary  condition  of  the  existence  and  evolution  of 
humanity,  but  it  is  ultimately  an  x,  a  thing-in-itself,  of 
whose  real  nature  we  know  nothing.  We  cannot  penetrate, 
he  says,  '  the  unattainable  mystery  of  the  essential  cause 
that  produces  phenomena  ' ; J  and  having  once  accepted  the 
false  distinction  between  phenomena  and  essential  causes, 
Comte  feels  himself  precluded  from  any  attempt  to  construe 
nature  and  man  as  elements  in  one  system  of  reality.  It  is 
'  metaphysical ',  in  his  view,  to  relate  nature  and  man  in  that 
way  to  a  common  principle,  although  it  is  apparently  not 
metaphysical,  but  commendably  positive  and  scientific,  to 
unify  the  dispersive  multiplicity  of  human  phenomena  in  the 
conception  of  a  single  Life. 

But  it  is  impossible  to  rest  in  a  merely  subjective  syn- 
thesis. In  reality  Comte,  in  the  natural  progress  of  his 
thought,  is  led  to  bring  the  world  of  nature  more  and  more 
within  the  scope  of  his  system,  and  so  to  remove  the  dualism 
which  makes  the  elevation  of  the  human  equivalent  to  the 
banishment  of  the  divine.  Professor  Edward  Caird  has 
pointed  out  very  clearly  the  crossing  of  two  opposite  lines  of 
thought  in  Comte's  philosophy.  It  was  largely  in  a  justifi- 
able reaction  against  a  shallow,  sentimental  optimism  and  an 

1  Ibid.,  p.  34. 


vii  '  THE  SUPREME  FATALITY  '  147 

external  teleology  that  Comte  originally  represented  Nature 
as  a  hostile,  or  at  least  indifferent  power,  from  which  every 
gift  has  to  be  wrung  by  man's  own  labour  and  fertility 
of  device.  Man  has  had  to  constitute  himself  his  own 
Providence.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  all  through  the  Poli- 
tique  positive  Comte  is  found  insisting  'J:hat  the  influence  of 
an  external  limiting  fatality,  which  forces  upon  man  the  sur- 
render of  his  natural  self-will  was  the  necessary  condition 
of  the  development  of  all  his  higher  powers  of  intelligence 
and  heart  V  It  is  not  only  the  intellectual  powers  that  are 
first  called  into  action  by  the  practical  necessities  of  the 
struggle  with  nature ;  the  same  struggle  imposes  on  him  the 
discipline  of  labour,  and  teaches  him  the  need  of  co-operation 
with  his  fellows.  It  thus  becomes  the  fostering  nurse  of  the 
altruistic  affections  which  otherwise  would  never  make  way 
against  man's  native  egoism.  '  But  assisted  by  the  supreme 
fatality  [these  are  Comte's  own  words]  universal  love  is 
able  habitually  to  secure  that  personality  2  should  be  sub- 
ordinated to  sociality.'  From  this  point  of  view,  Cajrd 
justly  comments,  the  external  fatality  '  can  no  longer  be 
ucalled  unfriendly,  or  even. indifferent  to  man;  or,  rather,  its 
immediate  appearance  as  his  enemy  is  the  condition  of  its 
being,  in  a  higher  sense,  his  friend  '. 

Comte's  thought  here  is  the  same  as  Kant's  in  the  little 
treatise,  Idee  su  einer  allgemeinen  Gcschichte,  which,  as  I 
mentioned  before,  led  some  of  the  German  pessimists  to 
claim  him  as  an  adherent  of  their  doctrine.  But  the  pessi- 
mism is  only  on  the  surface,  for  Kant  teaches  that  nature, 
if  a  niggardly  stepmother  as  regards  man's  immediate  hap- 
piness, is  the  power  that  converts  him  into  a  moral  being 
and  drives  him  on  to  all  his  higher  attainments.3  Comte's 
statements  in  the  same  sense  are  numerous  and  emphatic : 

1  E.  Caird,  Social  Philosophy  of  Comte,  p.  149. 

3  Comte  uses  this  phrase  to  designate  the  selfish,  as  opposed  to  the 
social,  impulses. 
*  This  was  the  only  one  of  Kant's  writings  which  Comte  knew  at  first- 


148          THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

"  We  have  to  consider  the  exceeding  imperfection  of 
our  nature.  Self-love  is  deeply  implanted  within  it,  and 
when  left  to  itself  is  far  stronger  than  social  sympathy. 
The  social  instincts  would  never  gain  the  mastery,  were 
they  not  sustained  and  called  into  exercise  by  the  economy 
of  the  external  world.  .  .  .  Thus  it  is  that  a  systematic 
study  of  the  laws  of  nature  is  needed  on  far  higher 
grounds  than  those  of  satisfying  our  theoretical  faculties. 
...  It  is  needed  because  it  solves  at  once  the  most  diffi- 
cult problem  of  the  moral  synthesis.  .  .  .  Our  synthesis 
rests  at  every  point  upon  the  unchangeable  order  of  the 
world.  ...  To  form  a  more  precise  notion  of  its  influ- 
ence, let  us  imagine  that  for  a  moment  it  were  really  to 
cease.  The  result  would  be  that  our  intellectual  faculties, 
after  wasting  themselves  in  wild  extravagances,  would 
sink  rapidly  into  incurable  sloth ;  our  nobler  feelings  would 
be  unable  to  prevent  the  ascendancy  of  the  lower  instincts ; 
and  our  active  powers  would  abandon  themselves  to  pur- 
poseless agitation.  ...  In  some  departments  this  order 
has  the  character  of  fate ;  that  is,  it  admits  of  no  modifica- 
tion. But  even  here,  in  spite  of  the  superficial  objections 
to  it  which  have  arisen  from  intellectual  pride,  it  is  neces- 
sary for  the  proper  regulation  of  human  life.  Suppose, 
for  instance,  that  man  were  exempt  from  the  necessity  of 
living  on  the  earth,  and  were  free  to  pass  at  will  from  one 
planet  to  another,  the  very  notion  of  society  would  be 
rendered  impossible  by  the  license  which  each  individual 
would  have  to  give  way  to  whatever  unsettling  and  dis- 
tracting impulses  his  nature  might  incline  him.  Our 
propensities  are  so  heterogeneous  and  so  deficient  in 
elevation  that  there  would  be  no  fixity  or  consistency  in 
our  conduct,  but  for  these  insurmountable  conditions.  .  .  . 
Supposing  us  in  possession  of  that  absolute  independence 
to  which  metaphysical  pride  aspires,  it  is  certain  that  so 
far  from  improving  our  condition,  it  would  be  a  bar  to  all 
development,  whether  social  or  individual."  1 

hand.  It  was  translated  for  him  by  a  friend  in  1824.  He  greatly  admired 
it,  and  said  that,  if  he  had  known  it  six  or  seven  years  earlier,  it  would 
have  saved  him  the  trouble  of  writing  his  treatises  of  1820  and  1822. 

1  General  View,  pp.  16-20.    Cf.  Positive  Polity,  vol.  ii,  pp.  25-8  ('  Gen- 
eral Theory  of  Religion '). 


vii  COMTE'S  FINAL  TRINITY  149 

It  would  really  be  difficult  to  put  the  organic  relation  of 
nature  to  man  more  strongly;  the  external  fatality  has 
become  a  beneficent  necessity.  And  in  his  later  elaboration 
of  the  Religion  of  Humanity  he  goes  so  far  in  retracting  the 
dualism  of  nature  and  man  as  to  add  Space  and  the  Earth 
to  Humanity  as  objects  of  worship.  '  The  Cultus  of  Space 
and  of  the  Earth,  completing  that  of  Humanity,  makes  us 
see  in  all  that  surrounds  us  the  free  auxiliaries  of  Humanity.' 
The  world-space  as  the  Great  Medium,  the  Earth  as  the 
Great  Fetish,  and  Humanity  as  the  Great  Being  to  which 
they  are  subsidiary,  form  the  fantastic  Trinity  with  which 
the  new  religion  concludes.  Space  is  the  medium  in  which  the 
earth  has  shaped  itself;  the  earth  or  the  great  fetish  has 
abstained  from  exerting  its  colossal  and  elementary  forces, 
and  has  sacrificed  itself  in  its  longing  that  the  '  Great  Being  ', 
in  which  the  highest  perfection  appears  in  the  most  concen- 
trated form,  may  develop. 

But,  with  Comte's  presuppositions,  this  can  be  no  more 
than  a  conscious  appeal  to  poetry  to  cover  with  its  flowers 
the  cold  reality  of  the  situation.  Comte  says,  indeed,  that, 
just  because  Positivism  has  so  completely  emancipated 
itself  from  the  old  theological  and  metaphysical  ways  of 
looking  at  the  world,  it  may  safely  adopt  in  imagination,  that 
is  to  say,  in  art  and  religion,  this  primitive  fetishistic  view 
of  nature  '  without  any  danger  of  confusion  between  the  two 
distinct  methods  of  thinking,  which  it  consecrates,  the  one 
to  reality  and  the  other  to  ideality'.1  He. ends  thus,  like 
Lange,  with  a  flight  from  reality  into  the  shadow-land  of 
poetic  fancy.  But,  in  Comte's  case,  the  imaginative  effort 
is  still  more  consciously  make-believe;  it  hardly  makes  any 
claim  on  our  serious  belief.  It  is  significant  only  as  a  final 
admission  of  the  impossibility  of  resting,  either  philosophic- 
ally or  religiously,  in  a  merely  subjective  synthesis.  As 
Caird  says,  commenting  on  the  passage  last  quoted,  '  a 
1  Synthese  subjective,  p.  40. 


150         THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY          LECT. 

worship  of  fictions,  confessed  as  such,  is  impossible.  Art, 
indeed,  is  kindred  with  Religion,  but  that  means  only  that 
Art  is  untrue  to  the  immediate  appearances  of  things,  in 
order  that  it  may  suggest  the  deeper  reality  that  under 
them.'  And,  after  all,  the  Great  Medium  and  the  Great 
Fetish  have  little  about  them  of  the  genuine  intuitions  of 
Art.  If  Comte  had  followed  out  his  own  correlation  of 
nature  and  man  to  a  serious  conclusion,  he  would  have  found 
the  true  '  medium  '  of  Humanity's  life  in  God,  '  that  Power 
which  alone  is  great  V 

But  to  accept  this  view  would  have  meant  the  disap- 
pearance of  Positivism  as  a  distinctive  doctrine,  for  it  would 
have  involved  a  revision  of  the  mistaken  phenomenalism 
on  which  it  is  based.  Such  revision  and  reconstruction 
was  not  to  be  looked  for  from  the  founder  and  high- 
priest  of  the  new  religion.  The  progress  we  find  is  in  the 
opposite  direction.  .The  subjective  and  relative  character 
of  the  synthesis  is  emphasized  by  the  strict  subordination 
of  knowledge  to  the  moral  ends  of  Humanity,  or,  in  Comte's 
own  phrase,  the  subordination  of  the  intellect  to  the  heart. 
'  L'esprit  doit  etre  le  ministre  du  cceur.'  This  is  as  essential 
a  feature  of  Positivism,  says  Dr.  Bridges,2  as  the  subordina- 
tion of  egoism  to  altruism;  and  it  means  for  Comte,  '  that 
the  intellect  should  devote  itself  exclusively  to  the  problems 
which  the  heart  suggests,  the  ultimate  object  being  to  find 
proper  satis  faction  for  our  various  wants.  .  .  .  The  universe 
is  to  be  studied  not  for  its  own  sake  but  for  the  sake  of  man 
or  rather  of  Humanity.' 3  '  It  is  idle,  and  indeed  in juripus^ 
we  read  again,  'tojrarry  the  study  of  the  natural  order 
beyond  the  point  needed  for  the  work  of  the  artificial  order 
constructed  by  man.'  *  Trns  short-sighted  limitation  of 

1  Tennyson,  '  God  and  the  Universe '. 

1  Unity  of  Comte's  Life  and  Doctrine,  p.  32  (popular  edition,  1910). 

*  General  View,  pp.  14,  26. 

*  Positive  Polity,  vol.  ii,  p.  39. 


vii  USELESS  KNOWLEDGE  151 

scientificjnquiry  to  what  can  be  shown  to  be  of  social  utility 
became  a  fixed  article  of  Comte's  creed,  and  forms 


Jhe  most  dang^fot]*)  pf*ir1*c  nt  »tw  n«»w  rpHmrm  Even  in  his 
earlier  work,  the  Philosophic  positive,1  he  had  condemned 
sidereal  astronomy  as  a  grave  scientific  aberration,  on  the 
ground  that  the  phenomena  of  the  stellar  universe  appear 
to  exert  no  appreciable  influence  on  events  within  our  solar 
system.  Ten  years  later,  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Positive 
Polity,  he  was  no  longer  content  thus  to  limit  astronomy  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  solar  system.  It  should  restrict  itself 
to  a  knowledge  of  the  earth,  and  consider  the  other  celestial 
bodies  only  in  their  relation  to  the  human  planet.  No 
doubt  the  ancients  were  deceived  in  believing  the  earth  to 
be  the  centre  of  the  world  ;  but  it  is  the  centre  of  our  world, 
and  accordingly  the  subjective  synthesis  '  concentrates  the 
round  the  earth  '.  By  the  time  he  had 


reached  the  fourth  volume  of  the  Positive  Polity,  he  was  of 
opinion  that,  strictly  speaking,  the  study  of  the  sun  and 
moon  would  suffice,  although  we  might  add  to  them,  if  so 
inclined,  the  planets  of  the  ancients,  but  not  the  '  little  tele- 
scopic planets  '  due  to  modern  discovery.2  This  is  only  an 
example  of  the  lengths  which  he  was  prepared  to  go.  No 
science,  he  thought,  should  be  carried  further  as  an  abstract 
study  than  is  necessary  to  lay  the  foundation  for  the  science 
next  above  it  in  the  hierarchy  of  the  sciences,  and  so  ulti- 
mately for  the  moral  and  social  science  in  which  they 
culminate.  Any  further  extension  of  the  mathematical  and 
physical  sciences  should  be  merely  '  episodic  '  —  limited,  that 
is  to  say,  to  what  may  from  time  to  time  be  demanded  by 
the  requirements  of  industry  and  the  arts  —  and  should  be 
left  to  the  industrial  classes.  It  was,  in  fact,  to  be  one  of  the 


main  functions  of  the  spiritual  power,  or  the  priesthood  of 
the  new  religion,  to  restrain  the  intellectual  activity  of  the 

1  In  the  sixth  volume. 

*  Cf.  Levy  Bruhl,  Philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte,  pp.  150-2. 


I52  THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY  VH 

community  from  wandering  at  large  in  the  fields  of  useless 
knowledge.     Comte  says  somewhere  that  the  Religion  of 
"  Humanity  will  keep  as  jealous  a  watch  as  mediaeval  Ca- 
tholicism ov,er  the  rovings  of  the  intellect. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  enlarge  on  the  short-sightedness 
of  this  incredibly  narrow  utilitarian  view  of  knowledge — 
condemned,  even  from  the  utilitarian  point  of  view  itself,  by 
the  impossibility  of  foreseeing  what  researches  are  destined 
to  lead  to  valuable  applications  and  what  are  not.  How 
often  have  the  abstrusest  and  apparently  most  purely  specula- 
tive investigations,  or,  again,  researches  into  phenomena  of 
apparently  the  most  trivial  kind,  resulted  in  transforming 
our  practical  activities  or  revolutionizing  our  intellectual 
outlook  on  the  world !  Bacon,  who  also  subordinated  knowl- 
edge to  practice,  knew  that  it  is  '  light  '  not  '  fruit '  which 
we  must  seek  in  the  first  instance.  And  while  no  man  of 
science  will  undervalue  the  benefits  which  his  discoveries 
may  confer  on  his  fellows,  it  is  knowledge  on  its  own  ac- 
count which  he  first  instinctively  seeks;  the  rest,  he  feels,  will 
be  added,  if  his  knowledge  is  true.  Comte's  proposal  to  select 
certain  provinces  as  worth  knowing  and  to  leave  others  out 
of  account,  and  to  determine,  moreover,  with  what  degree  of 
thoroughness  the  selected  provinces  are  to  be  investigated, 
is  so  subversive  of  the  primary  faith  both  of  science  and 
philosophy  that  it  comes  near  reducing  the  idea  of  truth 
to  one  of  subjective  convenience.  These  things  are  cited 
merely  to  show  how  the  idea  of  stopping  short  with  a  sub- 
jective synthesis,  of  taking  man  as  a  world  by  himself, 
involves  an  arbitrariness  of  treatment  which  subtly  affects 
Comte's  whole  method  of  procedure,  and  eventually  makes 
him  a  traitor  to  the  scientific  spirit  of  which  he  had  consti- 
tuted himself  the  champion.  Thought.  jfl 'whoever  sphere, 
cannot  stop  short  of  the  idea  of  an  order  or  system  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole. 


LECTURE  VIII 
POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM 

WE  traced  in  the  preceding  lecture  the  conflict  of  ideas 
running  through  Comte's  speculations.  What  is  character- 
istic in  his  philosophico-religious  theory,  what  gives  him  his 
distinctive  place  in  the  history  of  thought,  is  the  sharp 
initial  dualism  between  man  and  nature.  This  leads,  in  his 
theory  of  knowledge,  to  a  pure  phenomenalism  or  subjec- 
^tivism,  buttressed  by  a  polemic  against  metaphysics  which" 
depends  upon  the  same  '  residuum  of  bad  metaphysics  '  that 
led  Kant  to  his  doctrine  of  the  unknowable  thing-in-itself. 
In  his  ethical  and  religious  theory,  it  leads  him  to  treat 
nature  entirely  as  a  mechanical  system,  an  indifferent,  if  not 
a  hostile  power,  which  he  therefore  fitly  describes  as  an  ex- 
ternal fatality.  For  although  man  converts  this  fatality  to 
his  own  uses,  and  makes  its  existence  the  instrument  of  his 
own  advance  in  knowledge  and  goodness,  this  is  represented 
as  entirely  man's  own  doing,  making  the  best  of  an  existing 
situation.  Nature  and  man  are  not  part  of  one  scheme  of 
things ;  jnature  is  just,  as  it  were,  a  brute  fact  with  which 
man  finds  himself  confronted.  IJence  man  appears  in  the 
universe  like  a  moral  Melchizedek  without  ancestry,  owing 
everything  to  himself,  his  own  Providence,  bringing  into 
the  universe  for  the  first  time  the  qualities  which  merit  the 
attribute  divine.  And  accordingly,  Jhe  deification  of  man 
is  equivalent  to  the  dethronement  of  God.  As  Comic  puts 
it  in  a  notable,  if  somewhat  blustering  paradox,  the  heavens 
declare  the  glory,  not  of  God,  but  of  Kepler  and  Newton.  . 

Now,  if  we  look  simply  at  the  historical  process,  as  trace- 
able in  the  evolution,  say,  of  the  solar  system  and  of  our 
own  planet,  it  is  undoubtedly  the  case  that  in  the  time- 


154          POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM       LECT. 

sequence  the  authentic  lineaments  of  the  divine  are  recog- 
nizable for  the  first  time  in  ethical  man.  And  if  we  ignore 
the  biological  preparation  and  prefigurement — if  we  cut  the 
world  in  two  with  a  hatchet,  as  the  saying  is,  leaving  ethical 
man  on  the  one  hand  and  an  external  fatality  on  the  other — 
then  man  does  seem  the  only  source  and  seat  of  the  qualities 
which  have  a  rightful  claim  upon  our  worship.  But,  when 
we  try  to  think  seriously,  can  we  really  suppose  that  before 
the  planets  cooled  sufficiently  to  admit  of  organic  life,  the 
universe  (and  by  universe  I  mean  here  the  All  of  existence) 
consisted  literally  of  nothing  else  but  space  and  its  inorganic 
contents,  or  that  before  the  appearance  of  palaeolithic  man 
the  good  and  the  beautiful  had  no  place  in  the  nature  of 
things.  Surely  these  qualities  are  in  their  very  nature 
eternal;  they  are  not  actually  created  by  man,  shaped  by 
him  out  of  nothing,  and  added  henceforth  to  the  sum  of 
existence.  It  is  to  take  the  time-process  too  seriously — it 
is  to  take  it  falsely — to  regard  its  separate  parts  as  equally 
and  independently  real.  .Xirne,  as  Plato  said  in  a  fine  figure, 
is  the  moving  image  of  eternity.  We  are  creatures  of  time, 
and  in  a  sense  it  may  be  said  with  truth  that  we  cannot 
comprehend  the  timeless;  our  thinking  must  to  the  end  be 
done,  whether  we  will  it  or  not,  in  terms  of  time.  But  we 
can  at  least  see  that  time  is  a  continuous  process,  and  that 
the  nature  of  reality  can  only  be  revealed  in  the  process  as 
a  vyhole.  We  must  look  to  the  end,  as  Aristotle  said;  or  as 
Hegel  put  it,  the  truth  is  the  Whole,  the  End  plus  the 
process  of  its  becoming. 

It  has  been  the  fundamental  contention  of  these  lectures 
that  the  isolation  or  substantiation  of  the  earlier  stages  of 
a  time-process  is  a  radical  error  in  philosophy.  Continuity 
of  process,  I  have  urged,  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  emer- 
gence of  qualitative  differences ;  we  pass  from  one  plane  of 
experience  to  another.  But  the  whole  process  wears  the 
appearance  of  a  progressive  revelation,  not  of  a  sheer  addi- 


viii  THE  TIME-PROCESS  155 

tion  to  the  life  of  the  universe.  It  is  impossible  to  get  away 
from  the  conception  of  a  natura  rerum,  whether  we  call  it 
Nature,  the  Absolute,  or  God.  And  it  seems  impossible  to 
apply  in  such  a  quarter  the  idea  of  actual  progress  or  growth 
from  less  to  more.  I  cannot  believe  that  the  feeling  of  this 
impossibility  is  no  more  than  a  metaphysical  obsession  in- 
herited, as  M.  Bergson  appears  to  imply,  from  the  philo- 
sophical mistakes  of  the  past.  '  Creative  evolution  '  is,  I  think, 
an  eminently  fruitful  idea,  if  applied  on  the  phenomenal 
level  to  emphasize  the  living  reality  of  the  process,  the  idea 
of  the  future  as  something  to  be  won  by  our  own  effort,  the 
outcome  of  which  is  unforeseeable  on  the  basis  of  any 
analysis  of  the  past  or  the  present.  As  against  the  ordinary 
idea  of  a  predestinated  course  of  things,  and  especially 
against  the  idea  of  a  future  fatally  determined  by  the  past, 
M.  Bergson  seems  to  me  to  argue  with  convincing  force; 
and  this  gives  his  pages  such  an  extraordinary  freshness — 
the  freshness  and  the  forward  impulse  of  life  itself.  _But  t 
the  novelty  is  due,  surely,  to  the  inexhaustible  nature  of  the 
fountain  from  which  we  draw,  not  to  any  inconceivable 
birth  of  something  out  of  nothing.  It  all  strikes  one  as  a 
process  of  '  communication  ' — to  use  a  phrase  of  Green's — 
or,  as  I  said  already,  of  progressive  revelation.  The  novelty 
is  like  that  of  entering  a  new  room  in  the  Interpreter's 
House,  not  of  building  out  the  universe  into  '  the  intense 
inane.'  It  is  novelty  as  it  appears  to  us,  in  the  time-process, 
but  how  can  it  be  qualitatively  new  in  ordine  ad  universum? 
How  can  anything  come  into  being  unless  it  is  founded  in 
the  nature  of  things,  that  is,  unless  it  eternally  is? 

So  that  while  in  one  sense  it  is  true  that  we  think  to  the 
end  in  terms  of  time,  it  is  equally  true  that  we  cannot  think 
,any  continuous  process  in  time,  we  cannot  think  life  or 
development  (and,  as  Bergson  says,  it  is  only  in  the  living 
being  that  we  encounter  time  as  a  concrete  reality)  without 
being  lifted  in  a  sense  above  time  and  bringing  in  the 


156         POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM        LECT. 

eternal.  If  \ve  were  really  absolutely  subject  to  time,  in- 
capable of  transcending  it,  we  should  be  imprisoned  each 
of  us  as  a  single  point  of  particularity  in  its  own  moment 
of  time.  We  should  be  absolutely  unchanging  because  we 
should  be  reduced  to  the  abstraction  of  a  bare  point  of  ex- 
istence. To  think  of  time  as  a  process  is  therefore,  ipso 
facto,  to  think  of  a  reality  which  transcends  time,  and 
whose  nature  is  revealed  in  the  process.  The  truth,  once 
more,  is  the  Whole.  We  cannot,  as  philosophers,  rest  in 
any  principle  of  explanation  short  of  that  which  we  name 
the  Absolute  or  God.  _A11  experience  might  not  unfitly  be 
^described,  from  the  human  side,  as  the  quest  of  God— 
the  progressive  attempt,  through  living  and  knowing,  to 
.reach  a  true  conception  of  the  Power  whose  nature  is  re^_ 
vealed  in  all  that  is.  Man,  accordingly,  does  not  step  out- 
side of  this  universal  life  when  he  develops  the  qualities  of  a 
moral  being;  the  specifically  human  experiences  cannot  be 
taken  as  an  excrescence  on  the  universe  or  as  a  self-con- 
tained and  underived  world  by  themselves.  Man  is  the  child 
of  nature,  and  it  is  on  the  basis  of  natural  impulses  and  in 
commerce  with  the  system  of  external  things,  that  his  ethi- 
cal being  is  built  up.  The  characteristics  of  the  ethical  life 
must  be  taken,  therefore,  as  contributing  to  determine  the 
nature  of  the  system  in  which  we  live.  l£a>s  according  to 
the  interpretation  we  have  put  upon  the  principle  of  value 
and  upon  the  evolutionary  distinction  between  lower  and 
higher  ranges  of  experience,  the  ethical  predicates  must 
carry  us  nearer  to  a  true  definition  of  the  ultimate  Life  in 
which  we  live  than  the  categories  which  suffice  to  describe, 
for  example,  the  environmental  conditions  of  our  existence. 
'  This  fair  universe  ',  says  Carlyle,  in  the  famous  chapter  in 
Sartor  Resartus  on  Natural  Supernaturalism,  ^is,Jn.,v.ery  • 
deed  the  star-domed  city  of  God;  through  every  star, 
through  every  grass-blade,  and  most  through  every  living  . 
soul,  the  glory  of  a  present  God  still  beams.'  '  Man,'  he 


viii  MAN  THE  TRUE  SHEKINAH  157 

quotes  elsewhere  from  Chrysostom,  '  Man  is  the  true  Sheki- 
nah  ' — the  visible  presence,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  divine.  We 
are  far  too  apt  to  limit  and  mechanize  the  great  doctrine  of 
the^ncjjrqaliflD  which  forms  the  centre  of  the  Christian  faith. 
^Whatever  else  it  may  mean,  it  means  at  least  this — fha|  in  tfo^ 
conditions  of  the  highest  human  life  we  have  access,  as  no- 
where else,  to  the  inmost  nature  of  the  divine.  '  God  mani- 
fest in  the  flesh  '  is  a  more  profound  philosophical  truth  than 
the  loftiest  flight  of  speculation  that  outsoars  all  predicates 
and,  for  the  greater  glory  of  God,  declares  Him  unknowable. 
And  this,  we  saw,  was  the  central  truth  of  the  Religion  of 
Humanity  to  which  it  owes  what  vitality  it  possesses.  It 
was  one  of  Comte's  boasts  that  the  new  God  of  his  religion, 
as  contrasted  with  the  abstract  deities  of  theology  or  meta- 
physics, was  positive,  verifiable  like  a  scientific  fact,  an 
object  which  one  could,  as  it  were,  directly  see  and  touch. 
But  it  is  only  so  far  as  he  presses  the  organic  point  of  view, 
so  as  to  unite  the  Future  with  the  Present  and  the  Past  in 
one  mystical  body,  that  ideal  humanity  assumes  for  the 
Comtist  the  features  and  proportions  of  deity.  But  hu-, 
rnanity  in  the  idea — humanity  with  the  light  of  the  ideal 
^upon  its  upward  path  and  the  same  light  projected  on  the 
infinite  possibilities  of  the  future — is  not  a  fact  of  the  his- 
torical  order.  It  is  an  idea  every  whit  as  mystical  as  that 
of  God.  For  just  in  so  far  as  we  do  not  identify  humanity 
with  its  own  past  and  present,  but  endow  it  with  the  potency 
of  an  ampler  and  nobler  future,  just  so  far  do  we  take  man 
and  his  history  as  the  expression  of  a  principle  of  perfec-! 
tion,  whose  presence  at  every  stage  constitutes  the  possi-j 
bility  of  advance  beyond  that  stage.  JFjhjmanity  ig,  in  short, ; 
the  organ  and  expression  of  the  divine,  just  as  the  individ-L 
ual,  in  Comte's  way  of  putting  it,  is  the  organ  and  expres- 
sion of  his  race.  •  Mankind  has  no  more  an  entitative  inde- 
pendence of  God,  the  larger  Providence,  than  the  individ- 
ual possesses  such  independence  of  the  proximate  and 


158          POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM       LECT. 
lesser  Providence  which  the  pious  Positivist  recognizes  in 


Comte  complains,  with  some  show  of  justice,  that  the 
God  of  traditional  theism,  and  still  more  Nature,  which  he 
says  metaphysics  substitutes  for  God,  is  an  abstract  and 
empty  term.  A  critic  might  say  that  it  is  just  the  bare  idea 
of  potentiality  or  faculty,  into  which  we  refund  the  actual 
characteristics  of  the  actual  world.  And  in  a  sense  this  is 
true,  just  as  it  is  true  that  the  essence,  if  separated  from  its 
manifestation,  becomes  at  once  the  blank  abstraction  of  the 
unknowable.  But  to  complain  of  this  is  to  betray  one's  own 
bondage  to  a  false  and  exploded  metaphysics.  Certainly, 
apart  from  our  actual  experience,  God  or  the  Absolute  is  a 
subject  waiting  for  predicates,  an  empty  form  waiting  to  be 
filled.  But  we  need  be  at  no  loss  for  predicates  :  in  the 
words  of  the  Apostle,  '  the  invisible  things  of  him  from  the 
creation  of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  understood  by 
the  things  that  are  made,  even  his  eternal  power  and  God- 
head '.  Where,  indeed,  should  we  gain  a  knowledge  of  God 
except  from  his  manifestation?  In  precisely  the  same  way, 
our  knowledge  of  the  character  of  a  fellow-man  is  gained 
from  his  words  and  deeds.  But,  as  Carlyle.  phrases  it, 
'  Nature,  which  is  the  time-vesture  of  God  and  reveals  Him 
to  the  wise,  hides  Him  from  the  foolish  '.  And  among  the 
foolish  are  enrolled  not  a  few  philosophical  writers  who 
clamour  for  a  knowledge  of  God,  not  as  He  reveals  him- 
self in  nature  and  in  human  experience,  but  as  something 
to  be  known,  it  would  seem,  directly,  apart  from  his  mani- 
festation altogether.  And  when  this  craving  for  the  im- 
possible is  not  satisfied,  they  either  deny  his  existence  or 
proclaim  his  nature  to  be  unknowable.  Tftis  false,  ,j(jjefl}  oi 
knowledge  has  crossed  our  path  several  times,  and  now  that 
it  meets  us  in  this  supreme  instance,  it  may  be  well  to 
examine  it  more  closely  so  as  finally  to  lay  the  spectre. 

Locke  and  Kant,  as  we  have  already  seen  in  the  sixth 


vm  FALSE  IDEAL  OF  KNOWLEDGE  159 

lecture,1  are  the  typical  modern  examples  of  the  working 
of  this  false  ideal,  and  the  chief  sources  to  which  its  prev- 
alence in  popular  philosophy  may  be  traced.  In  Locke  it 
connects  itself  with  the  distinction  between  the  qualities  and 
the  substance,  in  Kant  with  the  distinction  (fundamentally 
similar)  between  phenomenon  and  noumenon,  the  appear- 
ance and  the  thing-in-itself.  ^Substance  and  quality  are 
correlative  terms  by  which  we  interpret  what  is  given  or 
presented  in  perception.  The  distinction  corresponds  to 
that  between  subject  and  predicate  or  substantive  and 
adjective,  and  neither  member  of  the  pair  has  any  separate 
•Existence.  Qualities  do  not  fly  loose  as  abstract  entities, 
and  substance  does  not  exist  as  an  undetermined  somewhat 
— a  mere  '  that ' — to  which  they  are  afterwards  attached. 
The  idea  of  substance  is  the  idea  of  the  qualities  as  unified 
and  systematized,  and  indicating,  through  this  unity  or 
system,  the  presence  of  a  concrete  individual.  The  two 
ideas,  therefore,  are  in  the  strictest  sense  inseparable — the 
two  aspects  of  every  reality — its_  existence  and  its  nature. 
Nothing  exists  except  as  qualitatively  determined;  and  its 
existence  as  such  and  such  an  individual  is,  in  fact,  deter- 1 
mined  or  constituted  by  the  systematic  unity  of  the  qualities.  > 
But  the  scholastic  tradition  of  the  substance  as  a  substratum 
— something  in  which  the  qualities  inhere — suggests  the 
notion  that  substance  and  qualities  are  two  separate  facts, 
the  substance  or  '  support  of  accidents  '  being  something 
behind  the  qualities,  over  and  above  them,  a  bit  of  reality- 
stuff,  so  to  speak,  an  atom  or  core  of  mere  existence,  on 
which  the  qualitative  determinations  are  hung.  And  the 
next  step  is  to  conclude,  as  Locke  does,  that  this  substance 
is  a  mystery  which  must  remain  for  ever  impenetrable  by 
human  faculties;  for  it  is  clear  that  the  most  exhaustive 
knowledge  of  the  qualities  cannot  advance  us  one  step 
towards  a  knowledge  of  what  is,  by  definition,  beyond  or 

1  Cf .  supra,  pp.  116-19. 


i6o        POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

behind  all  qualities.  As  Locke  puts  it,  '  By  the  complex 
idea  of  extended,  figured,  coloured,  and  all  other  sensible 
qualities,  which  is  all  that  we  know  of  it,  we  are  as  far  from 
the  idea  of  the  substance  of  body,  as  if  u,e  knew  nothing  at 
all'.1  Our  ignorance  in  this  respect  is  universal.  The  sub- 
stance of  spirit  and  the  substance  of  body,  he  says  in  the 
same  chapter,  are  equally  unknown  to  us.  '  We  do  not 
know  the  real  essence  of  a  pebble  or  a  fly  or  of  our  own 
selves.' 

In  Kant  the  contrast  is  between  the  thing-in-itself  and 
the  thing  as  it  appears,  between  the  noumenon  and  the 
phenomenon,  and  is  more  expressly  connected  with  the  idea 
of  knowledge  as  a  subjective  affection.  But  his  manner  of 
arguing  is  often  almost  a  verbal  repetition  of  Locke's. 
'  Supposing  us  to  carry  our  empirical  perception  even  to  the 
very  highest  degree  of  clearness,'  he  tells  us,  for  example, 
'  we  should  not  thereby  advance  a  step  nearer  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  constitution  of  objects  as  things-in-themselves.' 2 
Or,  again,  'All  in  our  cognition  that  belongs  to  perception 
contains  nothing  more  than  mere  relations.  .  .  .  Now  by 
means  of  mere  relations  a  thing  cannot  be  known  in  itself, 
and  it  may  therefore  be  fairly  concluded  that  the  presenta- 
tions of  the  external  sense  can  contain  only  the  relation 
of  an  object  to  the  subject  but  not  the  internal  nature  of 
the  object  as  a  thing-in-itself.' 3  And  he  complains  of  the 
nature  of  our  intelligence  as  '  an  instrument  of  research 
unfitted  to  discover  anything  more  than  always  fresh 
phenomena  '.* 

To  this  strange  duplication  of  appearance  and  essence, 
and  the  substantiation  of  the  one  over  against  the  other  as 

1  Essay,  II.  23.  16. 

*  General  Remarks  on  Transcendental  Aesthetic,  Werke,  vol.  iii,  p.  73 
(Hartenstein). 

' '  Das  Innere,  was  dem  Objekte  an  sich  zukommt '  (ibid.,  p.  76). 

4  Remark  on  the  Amphiboly  of  the  Conceptions  of  Reflection  (ibid., 
P-  235). 


viii  ESSENCE  AND  APPEARANCE  161 

a  distinct  and  different  fact,  philosophers  are  indebted,  as 
Berkeley  says  with  delicate  irony,  ^for  being  ignorant  of 
what  everybody  else  knows  perfectly  well.'  '  How  olterf 
must  I  tell  you  ',  says  Hylas  in  the  Dialogues,  '  that  I  know 
not  the  real  nature  of  any  one  thing  in  the  universe?  I  may 
indeed  upon  occasion  make  use  of  pen,  ink,  and  paper.  But 
what  any  one  of  them  is  in  its  own  true  nature,  I  declare 
positively  I  know  not.'  Philosophers  are  distinguished,  then, 
from  the  vulgar,  says  Philonous,  only  because  '  they  know 
that  they  know  nothing  '.  '  That ',  replies  Hylas,  '  is  the 
very  top  and  perfection  of  human  knowledge.'  J  Mi^gfc  we 
not  agree  with  Berkeley  that  the  whole  line  of  thought  is  an 
elaborate  and  perfectly  gratuitous  mystification  ?  _  Yet  what 
'Berkeley  put  forward  in  irony  was  propounded  at  a  later 
date  in  sober  earnest  by  Sir  William  Hamilton.  '  Our 
Science ',  he  says,  '  is  at  best  the  reflection  of  a  reality  we 
cannot  know;  we  strive  to  penetrate  to  existence  in  itself, 
and  what  we  have  laboured  intensely  to  attain,  we  at  last 
fondly  believe  that  we  have  accomplished.  But,  like  Ixion, 
we  embrace  a  cloud  for  a  divinity.'  .Man's  'science'  is. 
actually  '  nescience ',  and  the  consummation  of  knowledge 
Js  a  '  learned  ignorance  '.2  Or,  as  he  explains  it  in  his 
Lectures:  '  Matter  or  body  is  to  us  the  name  either  of  some- 
thing known  or  of  something  unknown.  In  so  far  as  matter 
is  a  name  for  something  known,  it  means  that  which  appears 
to  us  under  the  forms  of  extension,  solidity,  divisibility, 
figure,  motion,  roughness,  smoothness,  colour,  heat,  cold, 
etc.  .  .  .  But  as  these  phenomena  appear  only  in  conjunction, 
we  are  compelled  by  the  constitution  of  our  nature  to  think 
them  as  conjoined  in  and  by  something;  and  as  they  are 
phenomena,  we  cannot  think  them  the  phenomena  of  nothing, 
but  must  regard  them  as  the  properties  of  something  that  is 

1  Three  Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Philonous,  Third  Dialogue,  at 
the  beginning. 

2  Discussions,  p.  36. 


162         POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

extended,  solid,  figured,  etc.  But  this  something,  absolutely 
and  in  itself — i.e.  considered  apart  from  its  phenomena — is 
to  us  a  zero.  It  is  only  in  its  qualities,  only  in  its  effects,  in 
its  relative  or  phenomenal  existence,  that  it  is  cognizable 
or  conceivable;  and  it  is  only  by  a  law  of  thought  which 
compels  us  to  think  something  absolute  and  unknown  as  the 
basis  and  condition  of  the  relative  and  known,  that  this 
something  obtains  a  kind  of  incomprehensible  reality  to  us.'  * 
Our  ignorance,  he  is  careful  to  explain,  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  modest  range  of  our  senses  or  faculties.  '  We  may 
suppose  existence  to  have  a  thousand  modes,  but  were  the 
number  of  our  faculties  co-extensive  with  the  modes  of  being 
— had  we  for  each  of  these  thousand  modes  a  separate  organ 
competent  to  make  it  known  to  us — still  would  our  whole 
knowledge  be,  as  it  is  at  present,  only  of  the  relative.  Of 
existence,  absolutely  and  in  itself,  we  should  then  be  as 
ignorant  as  we  are  now.'  2  It  is  hardly  fair  to  father  such 
fatuities  upon  '  a  law  of  thought '  or  '  the  constitution  of  our 
nature  '.  It  is  no  doubt  in  accordance  with  a  law  of  thought 
that  we  refund  the  multiplicity  of  the  qualities  into  the 
unity  of  the  substance;  but  living  thought,  as  it  functions 
thus  in  actual  experience,  has  no  suspicion  of  the  terrible 
impasse  it  is  preparing  for  itself.  It  takes  itself  to  be  making 
a  useful  and  intelligible  distinction  within  experience,  where 
substance  and  qualities  are  complementary  and  inseparable, 
as  well  as  mutually  explanatory,  aspects  of  the  same  fact,  with 
no  hint  of  anything  '  considered  apart  from  its  phenomena  '. 
The  qualities  are  the  modes  in  which  the  substance  exists 
and  reveals  itself;  to  know  a  thing  through  its  qualities  or 
phenomena — its  modes  of  action — is  to  know  the  real  thing 
in  the  only  way  in  which  God  or  man  can  know  anything. 
It  is  only  the  bungling  reflection  of  the  philosopher  that 
ignores  the  essential  relativity  of  the  two  conceptions  and 
substantiates  the  two  aspects  as  two  separate  facts — the 

1  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  vol.  i,  p.  137.  *  Ibid.,  p.  153. 


viii  THE  MYTHICAL  NOUMENON  163 

qualities  or  phenomena  as  known  or  knowable,  and  the 
thing-in-itself,  by  definition,  unknown  and  unknowable. 
And  although  expressly  defined  as  unknowable,  it  is  still, 
it  would  seem,  a  slur  upon  our  knowledge  that  we  do  not 
know  this  thing-in-itself;  for  that  is  the  reason  why  our 
knowledge  is  labelled  by  these  thinkers  as  '  merely  rela- 
tive ',  '  only  of  phenomena  ',  or,  in  Hamilton's  phrase,  a 
species  of  '  nescience  '.  But  if,  as  I  have  argued,  this  in- 
accessible reality — the  thing  '  considered  apart  from  its 
phenomena  ' — is  really  a  phantom  created  by  a  misguided 
logic,  these  imputations  fall  to  the  ground;  and  however 
limited  and  imperfect  our  knowledge  may  be,  it  is  still,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  a  knowledge  of  reality.  Certainly,  as  Kant 
says,  the  progress  of  knowledge  will  never  discover  more 
than  '  fresh  phenomena ' ;  but  phenomena  are  not  one 
set  of  facts  and  noumena  another.  ^The  phenomenon  is 
the  noumenon  so  far  as  it  has  manifested  itself,  so  far  as 
we  have  grasped  it  in  knowledge.  In  a  strict  sense,  it  is 
not  really  correct  to  say  that  we  know  phenomena:  that 
is  like  saying  twice  over  that  we  know.  It  is  the  noumena 
or_real  things  thaJ§jjtfiJsBftWPjr«wd  phenomena  are  wKaf  we" 
know  about  them. 

There  can  indeed  be  no  greater  absurdity  than  the  per- 
verse reasoning  which,  as  Hutchison  Stirling  puts  it,  adduces 
our  knowledge  of  a  thing  as  the  proof  and  guarantee  of  our 
ignorance  of  it.1  And  yet  on  this  notion  is  founded  the  usual 
.agnostic  travesty  of  metaphysics.  Metaphysical  philosophy 
is  supposed  by  the  ordinary  agnostic  critic  to  be  engaged  in 
the  hopeless  quest  of  this  mythical  noumenon.  No  wonder 
he  regards  it  as  an  occupation  scarcely  compatible  with 
sanity.  As  it  was  put  with  brutal  frankness  quite  recently 
by  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester,  a  doughty  survivor  from  the  wars 
of  last  century,  '  One  may  regard  the  utmost  possibilities  of 
the  results  of  human  knowledge  as  the  contents  of  a  bracket, 

1As  regards  Protoplasm,  p.  71  (second  edition). 


164        POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

and  place  outside  that  bracket  the  factor  x  to  represent 
those  unknown  and  unknowable  possibilities  which  the 
imagination  of  man  is  never  wearied  of  suggesting.  This 
factor  x  is  the  plaything  of  the  metaphysician  '.'  It  is  this 
same  factor  x  which  Herbert  Spencer  proposed  to  hand  over 
to  religion  as  an  object  of  worship.  For  Spencer's  doctrine 
of  the  Unknowable  rests  entirely  on  the  considerations  that 
have  already  met  us  in  Locke,  Kant,  and  Hamilton.  He 
formulates  them  in  the  law  of  the  Relativity  of  Knowledge. 
'  Thought  can  never  express  more  than  relations,'  so  that 
'  from  the  very  nature  of  our  intelligence '  '  the  reality 
underlying  appearances  is  totally  and  for  ever  inconceivable 
by  us  '.  '  The  man  of  science  ',  he  tells  us,  '  realizes  with 
a  special  vividness  the  utter  incomprehensibleness  of  the 
simplest  fact  considered  in  itself.  He,  more  than  any  other, 
truly  knows  that  in  its  ultimate  essence  nothing  can  be 
known  '.2  When  this  transcendent  mystery,  which  meets  us 
in  every  particular  fact,  is  generalized,  it  becomes  the  In- 
comprehensible Power  on  the  acknowledgement  of  which 
religion  is  founded.  '  Religion  ',  he  admits,  '  has  ever  been 
more  or  less  irreligious  '  in  so  far  as  '  it  has  all  along  pro- 
fessed to  have  some  knowledge  of  that  which  transcends 
knowledge  '.  It  '  has  from  the  first  struggled  to  unite  more 
or  less  science  with  its  nescience  ',  but  as  it  resigns  itself  en- 
tirely to  nescience  it  will  reach  its  legitimate  goal.  '  Through 
all  its  successive  phases,  the  disappearance  of  those  positive 
dogmas  by  which  the  mystery  was  made  unmysterious,  has 
formed  the  essential  change  delineated  in  religious  history. 
And  so  religion  has  ever  been  approximating  towards  that 
complete  recognition  of  this  mystery  which  is  its  goal.' 
When  that  goal  is  reached  we  shall  have  achieved  that  '  per- 
manent peace  '  between  science  and  religion  referred  to  in 
an  earlier  lecture.  We  shall  '  refrain  from  assigning  any 

1  Preface  to  Hugh  S.  R.  Elliot's  Modern  Science  and  the  Illusions  of 
Professor  Bcrgson.  *  First  Principles,  p.  67. 


viii     UNKNOWABLE  OR  UNFATHOMABLE?     165 

attributes  whatever  '  to  the  object  of  our  worship.  We  shall 
recognize  it,  in  fine,  as  '  alike  our  highest  wisdom  and  our 
highest  duty  to  regard  that  through  which  all  things  exist 
as  the  Unknowable  V 

Volumes,  doubtless,  might  be  written,  as  Spencer  truly 
remarked,  on  the  impiety  of  the  pious;  their  familiarity 
with  the  secret  counsels  of  the  Most  High  makes  Agnosti- 
cism seem  by  comparison  a  reverent  and  a  reasonable 
attitude.  And  so  it  would  be,  if  Agnosticism  meant  no 
more  than  the  Biblical  challenge :  '  Canst  thou  find  out  the 
Almighty  unto  perfection?  It  is  as  high  as  heaven:  what 
canst  thou  do?  deeper  than  hell,  what  canst  thou  know?' 
If  to  comprehend  means  to  grasp,  as  it  were,  in  the  hand, 
to  understand  thoroughly,  to  see  all  round  an  object,  then 
unquestionably  the  Infinite  must  for  ever  remain  incom- 
prehensible by  the  finite.  So  far  as  Agnosticism  simply 
emphasizes  the  unfathomableness  of  the  universe  by  any 
human  sounding-line,  and  opposes  the  little  that  we  know 
to  the  vast  unknown,  it  is  a  praiseworthy  lesson  in  humility. 
This  is  really  what  most  of  the  '  cloud  of  witnesses  ',  cited 
by  Hamilton  and  Spencer,  intend  by  their  testimony — not  a 
blank  and  total  nescience,  .but  the  narrow  limits  of  our 
insight  as  measured  against  the  immensity  of  our  ignorance. 
It  is  this  feeling  of  the  vast  unexplored  possibilities  of  the 
universe  that  mingles  subtly  with  the  conception  of  the 
Unknowable,  and  half  redeems  the  notion  in  spite  of  itself. 
Curiously,  neither  Hamilton  nor  Spencer  seems  to  realize 
the  fundamental  difference  between  the  two  conceptions,  that 
of  the  inherently  unknowable,  and  that  of  the  unknown — 
the  not  yet  known,  and  doubtless  never  by  us  to  be  fully 
known,  but  still  the  ever  to  be  better  known.  Hamilton 
sums  up  at  one  point  by  saying  that  '  the  grand  result  of 
human  wisdom  is  thus  only  a  consciousness  that  what  we 
know  is  as  nothing  to  what  we  know  not ',  a  proposition 
1  Ibid.,  pp.  100-13. 


166        POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

which  no  reasonable  man  would  wish  for  a  moment  to  deny. 
Spencer's  phrases  are  likewise  often  vague  enough  to  cover 
either  meaning.  Thus,  when  he  lays  it  down  that '  all  things 
are  manifestations  of  a  Power  that  transcends  our  knowl- 
edge ',  what  transcends  our  knowledge  may  mean,  and  of 
course  in  Spencer's  theory  it  ought  to  mean,  what  is  absolutely 
inaccessible  to  our  knowledge.  But  it  may  be  taken  quite 
as  naturally  to  mean  that  which  overpasses  our  knowledge, 
that  which  is  inexhaustible  by  the  finite  creature;  in  short, 
in  the  apt  phrase  of  the  Apostle  '  the  depth  of  the  riches  of 
the  wisdom  and  knowledge  of  God  '.  '  Inaccessible  '  carries 
us  back  to  the  barren  abstraction  of  the  substance  hidden 
behind  its  qualities.  '  Inexhaustible  '  implies  no  such  un- 
meaning dualism ;  it  suggests  a  self-revealing  Power,  whose 
manifestation  is  limited  only  by  the  capacity  of  the  recipient. 
The  radical  inconsistency  of  a  pure  Agnosticism  has  often 
been  pointed  out.  Spencer's  very  phraseology  betrays  him. 
To  describe  as  unknowable  '  the  Power  manifested  to  us 
through  all  existence  '  is  a  plain  contradictio  in  adjecto,  and 
yet  that  is  his  constant  usage.  He  even  tells  us  that  '  the 
Power  manifested  throughout  the  Universe,  distinguished 
as  material,  is  the  same  Power  which  in  ourselves  wells  up 
under  the  form  of  consciousness  ',  though  he  seeks  to  pre- 
serve a  semblance  of  consistency  by  reminding  us  that 
'a  conception  given  in  phenomenal  manifestations  of  this 
ultimate  energy  can  in  nowise  show  us  what  it  is  V  He 
speaks  in  the  First  Principles  2  of  '  the  good  and  bad  conse- 
quences which  conduct  brings  round  through  the  established 
order  of  the  Unknowable  ',  and  comments  on  the  inability 
of  most  men  to  realize  this  immanent  moral  order,  which  he 
describes  in  the  same  connexion  as  one  of  the  '  actions  of  the 
Unseen  Reality  '.  And  in  the  fine  passage  at  the  close  of 
the  chapters  on  the  Unknowable, a  in  which  he  vindicates  the 

1  In  the  essay,  '  Religion,  a  Retrospect  and  Prospect,'  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  xv,  p.  n.  *p.  117.  *  Ibid.,  p.  123. 


vm  AGNOSTIC  INCONSISTENCIES  167 

right  of  every  thinker  to  utter  what  he  deems  the  highest 
truth  without  hesitating  lest  it  should  be  too  much  in  advance 
of  the  time,  he  reminds  his  possible  critics  that  the  thinker 
himself  '  with  all  his  capacities  and  aspirations  and  beliefs 
is  not  an  accident  but  a  product  of  the  time  .  .  .  and  that 
his  thoughts  are  as  children  born  to  him  which  he  may  not 
carelessly  let  die.  He,  like  every  other  man,  may  properly 
consider  himself  as  one  of  the  myriad  agencies  through 
whom  works  the  Unknown  Cause ;  and  when  the  Unknown 
Cause  produces  in  him  a  certain  belief,  he  is  thereby  author- 
ized to  profess  and  act  out  that  belief.  For,  to  render  in 
their  highest  sense  the  words  of  the  poet — 

Nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean, 
But  nature  makes  that  mean :  so  o'er  that  art 
Which  you  say  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes.' 

We  have  thus  a  Power  which  manifests  itself  in  the 
intelligible  order  of  the  material  system,  which  wells  up  in 
consciousness  in  ourselves,  which  inspires  man  '  with  all 
his  capacities  and  aspirations  and  beliefs  ',  progressively 
guiding  him  to  truth,  and  disciplining  him  also  to  goodness 
by  an  '  established  order  '  of  '  good  and  bad  consequences  '. 
Consequently  when  Spencer  began  to  talk,  in  all  the  dignity 
of  capitals,  of  the  one  absolute  certainty  that  we  are  '  ever 
in  presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  from  which 
all  things  proceed  ' — when  he  confided  to  the  public  that 
as  originally  written  the  expression  ran,  '  an  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy  by  which  all  things  are  created  and  sus- 
tained ',  and  that  the  last  clause  had  been  struck  out  in 
proof,  not  because  it  expressed  more  than  he  meant,  but 
only  because  the  ideas  associated  with  the  words  might 
prove  misleading — it  was  not  surprising  that  sympathetically 
minded  theologians  began  to  claim  him  as  a  Theist  malgre 
lul.  '  I  held  at  the  outset ',  he  says  himself,  '  and  continue 
to  hold  that  this  Inscrutable  Existence  .  .  stands  towards 


i68         POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

our  general  conception  of  things  in  substantially  the  same 
relation  as  does  the  Creative  Power  asserted  by  Theology.' 
'  Everywhere  I  have  spoken  of  the  Unknowable  as  the 
Ultimate  Reality — the  sole  existence :  all  things  present  to 
.  consciousness  being  but  shows  of  it.'  To  '  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy,  manifested  alike  within  us  and  without  us  ', 
'  we  must  ascribe  not  only  the  manifestations  themselves 
but  the  law  of  their  order'.1  Obviously  such  statements 
must  be  taken  as  proving,  if  it  needed  proof,  that  it  was 
the  positive  elements,  acknowledged  or  unacknowledged, 
in  the  conception  of  the  Unknowable,  that  invested  it  in 
Spencer's  eyes  with  a  genuine  religious  halo  and  ma.de 
such  a  Being  appear  to  him  the  suitable  residuary  legatee 
of  the  religious  sentiments  of  mankind.  But  as  formulated 
on  the  basis  of  his  perverse  theory  of  knowledge,  the 
Unknowable  remains  a  purely  negative  conception.  Its 
existence,  we  are  told,  is  '  of  all  things  the  most  certain  ', 
but  its  nature  he  still  obstinately  declares  to  be  '  not  simply 
unknown  but  proved  by  analysis  of  the  forms  of  our  intelli- 
gence to  be  unknowable  '.  -And  in  summing  up  his  position, 
he  describes  the  perfected  religious  consciousness  as  '  the 
^consciousness  of  an  Omnipotent  Power  to  which  no  attri- 
butes can  be  ascribed  '.2  Could  intellectual  perversity  go 
TurtKer,  or  is  it  possible  to  conceive  a  more  gratuitous  self- 
stultification? 

Some  of  the  last  quotations  are  drawn  from  Spencer's 
papers  in  the  interesting  duel  with  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 
which  enlivened  the  pages  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  during 
the  months  of  1884.  The  duel  eventually  became  triangular 
through  the  intervention  of  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen, 
who  discharged  the  blunderbuss  of  a  worldly  common- 
sense  at.  both  combatants  impartially.  Mr.  Harrison,  who 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  xvi,  pp.  6,  24,  25. 

'Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  xvi,  p.  838  ('Last  Words  on  Agnosticism 
and  the  Religion  of  Humanity ').  The  italics  in  the  last  two  quotations 


are  mine. 


vm  COMTIST  versus  AGNOSTIC  169 

came  forward  as  the  chief  representative  of  English  Positiv- 
ism, derided  the  idea  of  the  Unknowable  as  the  foundation 
of  a  religious  creed.  '  Wonder  has  its  place  in  religion,'  he 
said,  '  and  so  has  mystery ;  but  it  is  a  subordinate  place. 
The  roots  and  fibres  of  religion  are  to  be  found  in  love, 
awe,  sympathy,  gratitude,  consciousness  of  inferiority  and 
of  dependence,  community  of  will,  acceptance  of  control, 
^nanifestation  of  purpose,  reverence  for  majesty,  goodness, 
"creative  energy  and  life.  Where  these  are  not,  religion  is 
"not.'  '  Helpless,  objectless,  apathetic  wonder  at  an  inscrut- 
"a51e  infinity  may  be  attractive  to  a  metaphysical  divine; 
but  it  does  not  sound  like  a  working  force  in  the  world.' 
'  The  precise  and  yet  inexhaustible  language  of  mathe- 
matics ',  as  he  wittily  put  it,  '  enables  us  to  express,  in 
a  common  algebraic  formula,  the  exact  combination  of  the 
unknown  raised  to  its  highest  power  of  infinity.  That 
formula  is  xn.  .  .  .  Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  to- 
gether to  worship  the  Unknowable,  there  the  algebraic 
formula  may  suffice  to  give  form  to  their  emotions  :  they  may 
be  heard  to  profess  their  .unwearying  belief  in  xn,  even  if  no 
weak  brother  with  ritualist  tendencies  be  heard  to  cry: 
O  xn  love  us,  help  us,  make  us  one  with  thee.'  1 

Mr.  Harrison's  ulterior  purpose,  as  a  good  Comtist,  was 
to  point  out  the  superior  claims  of  the  Religion  of  Humanity 
to  be  the  religion  of  the  future.  But,  as  may  be  imagined, 
Spencer  was  at  no  loss  for  rejoinders  very  damaging  to  the 
mixed  and  ambiguous  character  of  Mr.  Harrison's  deity, 
while  Sir  James  Stephen  cynically  declared  that  '  Humanity 
with  a  capital  H  '  was  neither  better  nor  worse  fitted  to  be 
~a  god  than  the  Unknowable  with  a  capital  U,  each  being 
'  a  barren  abstraction  to  which  any  one  can  attach  any 
meaning  he  likes  '.2  A  bystander,  more  sympathetic  than 
Sir  James  Stephen,  and  with  a  better  understanding  of 

1 '  The  Ghost  of  Religion  '  (Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  xv,  pp.  494-506). 
2  Ibid.,  p.  910. 


170        POSITIVISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM         LECT. 

religious  feelings  and  motives,  might  have  pointed  out 
that  the  two  disputants  shared  the  truth  between  them, 
Mr.  Harrison  being  right  in  his  account  (in  the  passage 
quoted)  of  the  constitutive  factors  of  religion  and  the 
qualities  which  call  forth  our  gratitude,  our  reverence,  and 
our  love,  Spencer  being  right,  on  the  other  hand,  in  insisting 
that  worship  cannot  be  accorded  to  anything  less  than  the 
Perfect  and  the  Infinite,  and  that  Humanity,  therefore,  as 
a  finite  object  developing  in  time,  can  never  fill  the  place 
of  God.  'If  "veneration  and  gratitude"  are  due  at  all,' 
Spencer  says — taking  two  of  the  emotions  which  Mr.  Har- 
rison had  mentioned  as  essential  constituents  of  religion — 
'  they  are  due  to  that  Ultimate  Cause  from  which  Humanity, 
individually  and  as  a  whole,  in  common  with  all  other  things 
has  proceeded.  .  .  .  If  we  take  the  highest  product  of  evolu- 
tion, civilized  human  society,  and  ask  to  what  agency  all 
its  marvels  must  be  credited,  the  inevitable  answer  is— To 
that  Unknown  Cause  of  which  the  entire  Cosmos  is  a  mani- 
festation. A  spectator  who,  seeing  a  bubble  floating  on 
a  great  river,  had  his  attention  so  absorbed  by  the  bubble 
that  he  ignored  the  river  .  .  .  would  fitly  typify  a  disciple 
of  M.  Comte,  who,  centring  all  his  higher  sentiments  on 
Humanity,  holds  it  absurd  to  let  either  thought  or  feeling 
be  occupied  with  that  great  stream  of  Creative  Power, 
unlimited  in  Space  or  in  Time,  of  which  Humanity  is  a 
transitory  product.  Even  if,  instead  of  being  the  dull 
leaden-hued  thing  it  is,  the  bubble  Humanity  had  reached 
that  stage  of  iridescence  of  which,  happily,  a  high  sample  of 
man  or  woman  sometimes  shows  us  a  beginning,  it  would 
still  owe  whatever  there  was  in  it  of  beauty  to  that  Infinite 
and  Eternal  Energy  out  of  which  Humanity  has  quite 
recently  emerged.' 

If  this  passage  of  Spencer's  may  be  taken  as  conclusive 
against  the  Positivist  attempt  to  treat  Humanity  as  a  self- 
contained  fact,  an  Absolute  on  its  own  account — and  I  think 


viii  TWO  HALF-TRUTHS  171 

it  is  conclusive — surely  it  is  equally  conclusive  (although 
Spencer  himself  will  not  see  it  so)  against  his  own  cherished 
doctrine  of  the  unknowability  of  the  ultimate  Cause.  For. 
the  whole  process  of  human  evolution  is  here  unequivocally 
treated  as  the  active  self -manifestation  of  the  principle  of  the 
Whole.  And  so  the  worship  of  Humanity  and  the  worship 
nfjhe  Unlfl]QW?hle-  ear^  untenable  in  itself,  are  seen  both  to 
owe  their  vitality,  as  we  might  have  surmised,  to  the  partial 
and  complementary  truths  which  they  respectively  enshrine. 
And  these  truths  are  only  kept  apart  by  a  distorted  con- 
ception of  the  relation  of  reality  to  its  appearances. 


LECTURE  IX 
IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM 

THE  greater  part  of  the  last  lecture  was  devoted  to  an 
analysis  of  the  fallacy  which  seems  to  me  to  underlie  philo- 
sophical agnosticism,  and,  in  particular,  to  Spencer's  well- 
known  application  to  religion  of  the  sheer  disjunction  between 
reality  and  its  appearances.  The  result  of  this  disjunction 
is  necessarily  to  leave  the  one  member  of  it  a  blank  ab- 
straction, to  which,  as  Spencer  truly  says,  '  no  attributes  can 
be  ascribed; '  for  if  the  qualitative  nature  of  the  manifesta- 
tion throws  no  light  on  that  which  is  manifested,  the  latter 
remains  simply  the  bare  fact  of  an  existent  somewhat.  It 
is,  in  short,  the  old  notion  of  substance  as  a  support  of 
accidents  or  as  the  bare  point  of  existence  to  which  the 
qualities  are  somehow  attached.  This  comes  out  so  plainly 
in  Spencer's  presentation  of  the  agnostic  position  that  it 
will  be  worth  our  while,  before  passing  from  the  subject, 
to  advert  to  another  line  of  reflection  by  which  he  supports 
his  conclusion.  It  is  significant  that  he  so  frequently  tells  us 
that,  while  we  can  neither  know  nor  conceive  the  nature 
of  the  Power  manifested  through  phenomena,  the  exist- 
ence of  that  Power  is  of  all  things  the  most  certain.  Thus 
in  the  chapter  on  '  The  Relativity  of  all  Knowledge  V 
where  he  expressly  defends  (against  theorists  who  bid  us 
'  rest  wholly  in  the  consciousness  of  phenomena ')  the 
existence  of  a  positive  consciousness  of  the  Absolute  or 
Unconditioned,  he  insists  that  '  in  the  very  denial  of  our 
power  to  learn  what  the  Absolute  is,  there  lies  hidden  the 
assumption  that  it  is.  ...  It  is  rigorously  impossible  to  con- 
ceive that  our  knowledge  is  a  knowledge  of  Appearances 
1  First  Principles,  Part  I,  chap.  iv. 


ix  THE  MYSTERY  OF  '  BEING '  173 

only,  without  at  the  same  time  conceiving  a  Reality  of 
which  they  are  appearances ;  for  appearance  without  reality 
is  unthinkable.  .  .  .  Clearly,  then,  the  very  demonstration 
that  a  definite  consciousness  of  the  Absolute  is  impossible 
to  us,  unavoidably  presupposes  an  indefinite  consciousness 
of  it.  ...  The  sense  of  a  something  which  is  conditioned  in 
every  thought  cannot  be  got  rid  of.'  He  describes  it  as 
'  an  indefinite  notion  of  general  existence,  ...  an  indefinite 
consciousness  of  something  constant  under  all  modes — of 
being  apart  from  its  appearances  '.  It  is,  accordingly,  this 
notion  of  '  being  '  or  of  '  something  '  which  Spencer  has  in 
view  when  he  talks  in  another  chapter  of  '  the  utter  incom- 
prehensibleness  of  the  simplest  fact,  considered  in  itself  ', 
and  tells  us  that  '  in  its  ultimate  essence  nothing  can  be 
known  '.  The  ultimate  essence  is  just  the  being  of  the  thing, 
the  '  that '  of  it  as  opposed  to  the  '  what ' — its  existence  as 
distinguished  from  its  nature.  The  statement  is,  indeed,  so 
paraphrased  by  a  disciple :  all  things,  he  tells  us,  are  '  in  their 
essence  unknowable,  that  is,  in  their  reality  as  resting  in  what 
is.  ...  Precisely  that  relation  to  the  oneness  of  Being  by 
which  alone  they  are  at  all  is  neither  known  nor  knowable.' 1 
Now  there  is  a  sense  in  which  Being  may  be  described 
as  an  ultimate  and  abysmal  mystery.  It  is  the  sense  which 
fascinated  Parmenides  and  Spinoza  and  many  of  the  mystic 
theologians.  Von  Hartmann  speaks 2  of  the  ability  to 
appreciate  the  problem  of  mere  Being,  or,  as  he  calls  it,  of 
groundless  subsistence,  as  the  true  touchstone  of  meta- 
physical talent.  'If  nothing  at  all  existed,'  he  says,  'no 
world,  no  process,  no  substance,  and  also,  of  course,  no  one 
to  indulge  in  philosophic  wonder,  there  would  be  nothing 
wonderful  in  that — it  would  be  eminently  natural  and 


1  J.  Allanson  Picton,  Religion  of  the  Universe,  pp.  55-7.    The  book  is 
inscribed  '  To  the  Memory  of  Herbert  Spencer,  the  first  true  reconciler 
of  Religion  and  Science  '. 

2  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,  vol.  iii,  p.  196  (English  translation). 


174          IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHlSM        LECT. 

there  would  be  no  problem  to  solve.'  But,  that  anything 
at  all  exists,  or  how  the  somewhat  on  which  everything 
else  depends  comes  to  exist — this  is  so  unfathomably 
mysterious,  that  when  the  question  is  once  realized 
it  eclipses  all  possible  wonder  at  the  detailed  nature  of  the 
universe  which  thus  exists.  But  if  this  be,  as  Hartmann 
calls  it,  the  problem  of  problems  before  which  we  become 
rigid  as  before  a  Gorgon's  head,  it  is  obvious  that  it  is,  as 
he  says,  inherently  insoluble — whether  the  metaphysician 
be  human  or  divine.  It  is  fruitless,  if  not  absurd,  to  inquire, 
in  Lotze's  quaint  phrase,  '  how  being  is  made,'  how  there 
comes  to  be  anything  at  all.  Even  a  divine  metaphysician 
must  start  from  the  fact  of  his  own  existence;  and  we,  as 
philosophers,  have  not  to  create  the  universe  or  to  explain 
why  there  should  be  a  universe  at  all,  but  to  find  out  what 
kind  of  a  universe  it  is.  It  becomes  quite  misleading, 
therefore,  to  speak  as  if  we  were  cut  off  from  a  knowledge 
of  the  essence  of  things,  because  we  have  to  take  their 
existence  for  granted.  From  this  point  of  view,  there  is 
nothing  mysterious  or  unfathomable  at  all  about  being : 
there  is  nothing  more  to  know  about  it  than  just '  being  ',  or, 
as  Spencer  dilutes  the  term,  '  the  sense  of  a  something '  or 
'  an  indefinite  notion  of  general  existence '.  It  is  the 
beginning  of  knowledge,  not  its  ultimate  and  transcendent 
goal.  The  task  of  knowledge,  philosophical  as  well  as 
scientific,  is  to  make  this  indefinite  consciousness  definite, 
to  discover  what  kind  of  a  something  it  is  that  we  have  to 
deal  with.  But  the  agnostic  way  of  putting  it  converts 
the  mere  *  that ' — the  fact  of  the  thing's  existence — into 
a  profounder  kind  of  '  what ',  and  declares  this  to  be  un- 
knowable. For  such  a  procedure  there  is  no  justification 
either  in  the  case  of  an  individual  thing  or  in  the  case  of 
the  Absolute.  Of  the  Absolute  it  has  been  finely  said,  '  its 
predicates  are  the  worlds  V  We  learn  its  nature  through 

1  Laurie,  Synthetica,  vol.  ii,  p.  88. 


ix  THE  IMMANENT  GOD  175 

the  facts  of  the  universe,  especially  so  far  as  any  system  or 
scale  of  values  is  discernible  in  them.  This  is  the  immanent 
God  on  our  knowledge  of  whom  it  has  been  the  purpose  of 
this  first  course  of  lectures  to  insist. 

The  nature  of  ultimate  Reality  is  to  be  read,  therefore,  in 
its  manifestation,  and  may  be  read  there  truly.  We  may  be 
sure  the  revelation  is  not  exhaustive,  for  all  revelation  must 
be  ad  modum  recipients;  it  must  be  proportionate  to  the 
capacity  of  the  receiving  mind.  Every  advance  in  knowledge, 
or  in  goodness,  or  in  the  intuitions  of  beauty  and  grandeur 
offered  us  in  nature  or  in  art,  is  a  further  revelation  of  the 
heights  and  depths  of  the  divine  nature.  From  this  point 
of  view  the  very  notion  of  development  is  progressive 
initiation.  '  1  have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye 
cannot  bear  them  now.'  And  if  this  is  true  within  the  his- 
torical development  of  mankind  in  the  past,  it  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  record  is  not  closed  at  the  present  stage 
of  attainment.  Every  creature,  says  Nietzsche,  has  paved 
the  way  for  something  higher ;  man  is  but  a  transition  figure, 
'  a  rope,'  as  he  calls  it,  between  the  beast  and  the  superman  of 
the  future.  In  a  nobler  sense  than  he  himself  applies  it,  we 
may  accept  the  idea  of  the  more  godlike  man  that  is  to  be — 
just  as  we  may  give  rein  to  our  imagination  and  suppose 
such  larger  intelligences  existing  now  in  worlds  beyond  our 
ken.  But  all  such  acknowledgements  alter  nothing  as  to  the 
attitude  of  the  knower  and  the  mode  in  which  his  knowledge 
is  obtained.  The  most  exalted  intelligence  must  read,  as 
we  do,  in  the  volume  of  God's  works,  to  learn  His  nature : 
his  knowledge,  like  ours,  is  through  the  manifestation. 
Though  it  may  be  truer  in  the  sense  of  being  ampler  and 
more  adequate,  and  so  correcting  errors  and  solving  diffi- 
culties incident  to  our  more  limited  range  of  vision,  this  is 
but  a  difference  of  degree,  not  a  qualitative  distinction  be- 
tween absolute  and  relative,  as  if  the  one  knowledge  were 
true  and  the  other  vitiated  by  some  inherent  defect.  Our 


176          IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM        LECT. 

knowledge  is  as  true  for  us  as  the  ampler  knowledge  for  the 
higher  being.  Each  is  true  as  being  an  interpretation  of  the 
facts  accessible  at  that  particular  stage.  With  new  data 
comes  new  insight ;  but  the  new  insight  carries  forward  and 
incorporates  the  old — it  does  not  abolish  it. 

That  being  so,  it  has  been  the  contention  of  these  lectures 
that  everything  depends  upon  our  keeping  in  view  the  whole 
range  of  accessible  facts,  if  we  are  to  form  a  true  idea  of  the 
nature  of  the  system  as  a  whole,  and  consequently  of  the 
nature  of  the  Being  whom  it  reveals.  We  began  by  accept- 
ing Hume's  challenge :  '  Whence  can  any  cause  be  known 
but  from  the  known  effects?  Whence  can  any  hypothesis 
be  established  but  from  the  apparent  phenomena?  '  But  we 
demurred  to  his  own  limitation  of  the  argument  to  '  a  con- 
templation of  the  works  of  nature  ',  i.  e.,  to  the  structure  and 
arrangements  of  the  external  world.  Hume  himself  speaks 
of  '  living  existences  '  as  '  the  only  beings  worth  regarding  ' 
when  it  comes  to  a  final  judgement  on  the  nature  of  the 
universe.1  The  ultimate  Power  '  wells  up '  as  Spencer 
phrases  it,  in  man,  the  knower,  no  less  than  in  the  objects  he 
contemplates,  and  not  only  in  man  as  knower,  but  in  all  the 
aspects  of  human  life.  It  seemed  to  us,  accordingly,  that, 
instead  of  being  excluded  from  consideration,  the  charac- 
teristics of  human  consciousness  and  human  development 
must  be  the  most  significant  of  all  facts  for  the  solution  of 
our  question.  We  saw  how  Kant  gave  this  central  signifi- 
cance to  man's  ethical  experience.  But  all  through  our  dis- 
cussion we  have  had  to  struggle  against  the  tendency  to  treat 
the  world  of  nature  as  a  fact  complete  in  itself,  a  system  fin- 
ished without  man.  This  tendency  appeared  in  very  differ- 
ent forms,  sometimes  reducing  consciousness  to  an  inactive 
accompaniment  of  material  processes  going  on  by  themselves, 
at  other  times,  as  in  the  Positivist  theory,  making  man  his 
own  creator,  so  far  as  the  distinctively  human  virtues  and 

1  Dialogues,  Part  XI. 


ix    GENERAL  CONCLUSION  REACHED    177 

excellences  are  concerned.  I  have  insisted,  on  the  contrary, 
that  to  do  this  is  to  convert  abstractions  into  realities  by 
separating  what  is  given  together  and  cannot  be  conceived 
apart.  Man  is  organic  to  nature,  and  nature  is  organic  to 
man.  It  is  a  false  abstraction  to  try  to  take  the  world  apart 
from  the  central  fact  in  which  it  so  obviously  finds  expres- 
sion. So  taken,  it  is  like  a  broken  arch  or,  in  Laurie's  figure, 
a  circle  unclosed ;  there  is  no  system,  no  whole  of  being,  no 
real  fact  at  all,  till  the  external  gathers  itself  up,  as  it  were, 
into  internality,  and  existence  sums  itself  in  the  conscious 
soul.  And  this  way  of  talking  in  terms  of  a  time-process, 
common  and  natural  as  it  is,  should  not  mislead  us  into 
thinking  that  the  external  ever  existed  as  a  mere  external, 
before  it  internalized  itself — as  if  the  body  of  the  universe 
existed,  so  to  speak,  like  an  empty  case  waiting  for  a  soul. 
The  metaphorical  language  in  which  Lotze,  not  to  mention 
Hegel  and  others,  speaks  of  nature  as  striving  towards  self- 
expression  and  rising,  as  it  were,  stage  by  stage  towards  its 
self -completion  in  mind,  is  clearly  not  intended  as  the  record 
of  an  historical  progress.  Such  expressions  are  an  analysis 
of  ideal  stages  or  'moments  ',  as  idealistic  writers  are  fond  of 
calling  them,  aspects  of  one  total  fact,  which  can  only  be 
known  truly  as  a  whole  or  system.  Hence  I  was  at  pains  to 
insist  that  questions  of  the  apparent  historical  genesis  of  the 
higher  or  more  complex  from  the  lower  or  simpler  have  no 
philosophical  importance  or  relevance,  seeing  that,  philo- 
sophically considered,  the  lower  or  simpler  phases  are  not 
independent  facts  existing  as  a  prius,  but  abstract  aspects  of 
a  single  fact,  which  is  fully  expressible  only  in  terms  of  self- 
conscious  experience. 

So  far  our  argument  may  claim  to  have  been  continuous 
and  to  have  reached  a  definite,  if  still  very  general,  con- 
clusion. I  will  not  attempt  to  carry  the  argument  further 
within  the  limits  of  the  present  course.  I  will  try  instead  to 


i78         IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM         LECT. 

render  the  nature  of  our  conclusion  more  precise  by  differen- 
tiating it  from  theories  which  it  may  seem  to  resemble,  and 
by  the  refutation  of  which  it  is  frequently  supposed  to  be 
overthrown.  It  is  specially  important  at  the  present  time 
to  disentangle  the  position  from  its  supposed  dependence  on 
the  questionable  or  more  than  questionable  arguments  by 
which  those  other  theories  are  supported;  and  in  what 
follows  we  shall  have  in  view,  in  the  first  place,  the  strong 
trend  of  speculation  in  certain  quarters  at  the  present 
day  in  the  direction  of  Pan-psychism,  and,  in  the  second 
place,  the  active  contemporary  propaganda  in  support  of 
Realism. 

Our  doctrine,  as  we  have  built  it  up,  may  be  focused  in 
the  saying  that  man  (or  mind)  is  organic  to  nature.  The 
very  phrase,  it  may  be  pointed  out,  implies  the  comple- 
mentary truth  of  nature  as  organic  to  man,  nature  as  the 
essential  condition  of  finite  mind.  Internality  is  impossible 
without  externality;  a  subject  or  a  self  would  be  an  empty 
form,  if  it  had  not  a  world  to  draw  on  for  its  filling.  Just 
as  every  living  centre  has  its  environment,  which  furnishes 
it  with  the  material  which  it  transmutes  and  builds  into 
the  fabric  of  its  own  life — so  that  it  is  only  through  its 
environment  that  it  lives  at  all — so,  still  more  obviously, 
the  self  of  knowledge  and  action  could  have  nothing  either 
to  know  or  to  do,  apart  from  the  natural  and  social  world  of 
which  it  is  at  once  the  consciousness  and  the  active  organ. 
The  world  of  nature  and  the  world  of  social  relations  founded 
upon  it  constitute,  as  it  were,  the  condition  of  individuation. 
And  in  emphatically  repudiating  the  mechanistic  scheme 
of  physical  science  as  a  self-existent,  underlying  reality,  of 
which  everything  else  is  the  inexplicable  outcome,  a  spiritual 
philosophy  which  is  sure  of  itself  feels  no  temptation  to  deny 
or  to  minimize  the  mechanical  aspects  of  the  cosmos  on 
which  its  higher  life  reposes.  On  the  contrary,  nature,  as  a 
realm  of  inviolable  law,  appears,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  to  be 


ix  MONADISM  179 

the  necessary  condition  of  the  life  of  intelligence  and  reason- 
able action.  Nevertheless,  a  revulsion  from  the  conclusions 
of  the  lower  Naturalism  has  led  a  number  of  idealistic  think- 
ers at  the  present  day  to  seek  to  turn  the  tables  upon  Natural- 
ism by  resolving  the  universe  without  remainder  into  an 
assemblage  of  subjective  centres  of  existence,  and  thus  abol- 
ishing altogether  the  conception  of  nature  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  term.  On  the  ordinary  view,  nature  provides 
the  theatre,  the  scenery,  and  properties  for  the  spiritual 
drama.  The  system  of  nature  seems,  as  I  have  suggested,  to 
furnish  at  once  the  conditions  of  individuation  and  the 
means  of  communication  between  individuals.  But,  on  this 
monadistic  theory,  the  organic  vesture  of  the  spirit  and  its 
environmental  conditions  are  both  resolved  into  innumerable 
quasi-spiritual  centres;  and  the  objective  world  becomes 
simply  the  appearance  of  these  souls  or  monads  to  one  an- 
other. The  classical  type  of  this  theory  is  the  Monadology 
of  Leibnitz,  and  its  recent  advocates  have  not  greatly  de- 
parted from  or  improved  upon  his  exposition. 

The  thought-motives  of  the  theory  are  fairly  obvious.  It 
seems  to  furnish  the  most  crushing  reply  conceivable  to 
materialism  by  spiritualizing  the  universe  to  its  tiniest  par- 
ticle. The  principle  of  continuity  also  seems  to  lend  it  pow- 
erful support;  and  this  is,  in  fact,  the  principle  on  which 
the  theory  is  mainly  based  by  Leibnitz  and  most  of  his  fol- 
lowers. Our  own  existence,  as  we  immediately  experience 
it,  gives  us  our  pied-a-terre,  the  living  instance  from  which 
we  start.  We  habitually  assume  that  the  lower  animals  exist 
as  similar  centres  of  feeling  and  striving;  they  are  conscious, 
although  not  possessing  the  self -consciousness  that  comes 
with  the  conceptual  reason.  As  we  descend  in  the  animal 
scale  to  the  lowest  organic  forms,  we  still  imagine  some  de- 
gree of  this  consciousness  to  remain — some  faint  analogue 
of  our  own  self-centred  life,  though  we  may  hesitate  to  speak 
of  it  even  as  consciousness  and  may  invoke  the  convenient 


i8o         IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM         LECT. 

term  subconsciousness  to  describe  it — a  vague,  diffused,  un- 
differentiated  feeling,  conceived  as  the  impulsive  basis  of 
action,  seeing  that  feeling  and  activity  are  for  psychology 
two  inseparable  aspects  of  a  single  fact.  And  when  we  once 
surrender  ourselves  to  the  principle  of  continuity,  why 
should  we  stop  at  the  confines  of  the  animal  kingdom,  or 
why  should  we  limit  such  considerations  to  the  case  of  the 
organism  as  a  whole?  Modern  psychology  is  on  the  track 
of  many  obscure  phenomena  which  suggest  the  idea  of  sub- 
ordinate centres  of  experience  and  memory  besides  the  cen- 
tral and  normal  consciousness  based  upon  the  cortical  centres 
in  the  brain.  Speculative  biologists  have  extended  this  idea, 
and  would  treat  each  living  cell  as  in  some  degree  conscious 
or  quasi-conscious,  explaining  thereby  its  selective  action  and 
general  behaviour.  And  again,  why  stop  at  the  living  cell  ? 
The  affinities,  as  they  are  called,  of  chemical  atoms  and 
molecules  seem  to  exhibit  the  same  characteristics  of  action 
from  within — some  analogue  of  selection  or  choice.  And 
the  matter  of  the  physicist  only  seems  to  us  dead  and  inert 
because  we  ordinarily  view  it  in  the  mass.  But  science 
resolves  the  passive  lump  of  extended  matter  into  a  mazy 
dance  of  invisible  particles,  if  not  into  sheerly  ideal  centres  of 
force.  Hence  the  atom,  or  whatever  lies  behind  the  atom, 
as  the  ultimate  term  of  physical  science,  is  itself  conceived 
by  the  Monadist  as  psychical  in  essence,  a  feeling  and  respon- 
sive centre  after  the  analogy  of  our  own  existence,  in  how- 
ever remote  a  degree.  And  thus  we  arrive  at  the  view 
expressed  by  Leibnitz  in  a  well-known  passage :  '  Each  por- 
tion of  matter  is  not  only  infinitely  divisible,  but  is  also 
actually  subdivided  without  end.  .  .  .  Whence  it  appears 
that  in  the  smallest  particle  of  matter  there  is  a  world  of 
creatures,  living  beings,  animals,  entelechies,  souls.  Each 
portion  of  matter  may  be  conceived  as  like  a  garden  full  of 
plants  or  like  a  pond  full  of  fishes.  But  each  branch  of  every 
plant,  each  member  of  every  animal,  each  drop  of  its  liquid 


ix  THE  ATOMIC  SOUL  181 

parts  is  also  some  such  garden  or  pond.  .  .  .  Thus  there  is 
nothing  fallow,  nothing  sterile,  nothing  dead  in  the  universe, 
no  chaos,  no  confusion  save  in  appearance,  somewhat  as  it 
might  appear  to  be  in  a  pond  at  a  distance,  in  which  one 
would  see  a  confused  movement  and,  as  it  were,  a  swarming 
of  fish  in  the  pond,  without  separately  distinguishing  the 
fish  themselves.' 1 

Sometimes  in  contemporary  writers  the  theory  of  an 
atomic  soul  appears  as  a  blundering  attempt  to  throw  the 
glamour  of  Idealism  over  a  purely  materialistic  position. 
So  it  is,  for  example,  in  Haeckel,  who  seems  to  think  he  has 
solved  the  '  Riddle  of  the  Universe  '  by  allowing  each  atom 
'  a  rudimentary  form  of  sensation  and  will,  or,  as  it  is  better 
expressed,  of  feeling  (aesthesis)  and  inclination  (tropesis)'.2 
But  things  are  not  changed  by  giving  them  Greek  names,  nor 
is  the  philosophical  position  altered  by  infusing,  as  it  were, 
into  each  occurrence  a  drop  of  consciousness.  Idealism 
means  essentially  the  interpretation  of  the  world  according 
to  a  scale  of  value,  or,  in  Plato's  phrase,  by  the  Idea  of  the 
Good  or  the  Best.  The  addition  of  consciousness  to  every- 
thing as  its  inner  side,  a  running  accompaniment,  which 
makes  no  difference — this  favourite  idea  of  popular  scientific 
Monism  is  a  complete  philosophical  cul-de-sac.  The  philo- 
sophical interest  of  consciousness  lies  in  the  ideal  values  of 
which  it  is,  so  to  say,  the  bearer,  not  in  its  mere  existence 
as  a  more  refined  kind  of  fact.  One  has  heard  of  people 
who  treated  the  ether  as  a  half-way  house  between  matter 
and  thought,  and  this  way  of  treating  consciousness  shows 
much  the  same  habit  of  mind. 

In  other  quarters,  Pan-psychism  is  adopted  as  a  way  of 
escape  from  difficulties  in  the  theory  of  knowledge.  Thus 
Clifford  escapes  from  Subjective  Idealism  by  a  distinction 
between  the  object,  which  he  takes  to  be  a  subjective  modifi- 

1  Monadology,  sections  65-9. 

2  Riddle  of  the  Universe,  chap.  xii. 


182  IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM         LECT. 

cation  in  the  knowing  mind,  and  the  eject  or  extra-mental 
reality  which  these  conscious  states  symbolize.  The  typical 
ejects  which  we  all  recognize  are  the  minds  or  consciousnesses 
of  our  fellow-men;  and  on  that  analogy  Clifford  concludes 
that  ejects  (or  things-in-themselves,  as  he  also  calls  them) 
are  always  psychical  in  character.  He  does  not,  indeed, 
place  a  mind  or  unitary  consciousness  behind  every  material 
particle;  but,  since  mind  may  be  regarded  as  a  complex,  of 
which  simple  feelings  are  the  elements,  he  supposes  these 
elements  to  exist  independently,  and  by  subsequent  com- 
bination to  give  rise  to  the  faint  beginnings  of  sentience  in 
a  low  organism,  and  eventually,  in  more  complex  combina- 
tions, to  the  phenomena  of  human  consciousness.  'A  mov- 
ing molecule  of  inorganic  matter  does  not  possess  mind 
or  consciousness;  but  it  possesses  a  small  piece  of  mind- 
stuff.  When  molecules  are  so  combined  together  as  to  form 
the  film  on  the  under  side  of  a  jelly-fish,  the  elements  of 
mind-stuff  which  go  along  with  them  are  so  combined  as  to 
form  the  faint  beginnings  of  Sentience.  When  the  molecules 
are  so  combined  as  to  form  the  brain  and  nervous  system  of 
a  vertebrate,  the  corresponding  elements  of  mind-stuff  are 
so  combined  as  to  form  some  kind  of  consciousness.  .  .  . 
When  matter  takes  the  complex  form  of  a  human  brain,  the 
corresponding  mind-stuff  takes  the  form  of  a  human  con- 
sciousness,' having  intelligence  and  volition.'  '  Mind-stuff 
is  then  the  reality  which  we  perceive  as  matter.' * 

The  idea  of  small  pieces  of  unconscious  mind-stuff  com- 
bining independently  into  minds  is,  I  take  it,  a  '  psycho- 
logical monster  '  of  the  most  impossible  type.  But  that 
peculiar  feature  of  Clifford's  theory  has  no  special  relevance 
in  the  present  connexion.  The  theory  is  quoted  simply  as 
an  example  of  the  difficulty  which  is  widely  felt  in  taking 
material  things,  as  we  perceive  them,  to  be  realities  existing 

1  Lectures  and  Essays,  vol.  ii,  p.  85 :  Essay  '  On  the  Nature  of  Things- 
in-themselves  '. 


ix  SPONTANEITY  AND  FREEDOM  183 

in  their  own  right.  This  is  a  genuine  difficulty.  It  is  the 
nerve  of  Berkeley's  criticism  of  Locke's  '  stupid  thoughtless 
somewhat ' ;  and  unless  we  are  satisfied,  like  Berkeley,  to 
treat  the  material  world  as  a  system  of  signs,  which  have  no 
existence  save  as  intermittent  experiences  in  the  minds  of 
individual  knowers  and  as  a  continuous  divine  purpose  of 
acting  according  to  certain  rules,  the  alternative  seems  to  be 
that  of  the  Pan-psychists,  namely,  to  place  behind  each 
material  appearance  a  mental  counterpart  or  monadic  soul. 
But  this  philosophical  animism  is  in  the  end,  I  propose  to 
argue,  too  primitively  simple  an  expedient,  and  it  is  a  theory 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  our  common-sense  attitude  towards 
natural  things. 

But  perhaps  the  most  important  motive  underlying 
Monadism  still  remains  to  be  mentioned.  By  its  most 
recent  advocates,  Monadism  appears  to  be  regarded  as  a 
way  of  escape  from  the  complete  determinism  with  which 
the  mechanistic  scheme  seems  to  threaten  human  life. 
Inasmuch  as  it  treats  feeling  and  striving — that  is  to  say, 
the  fundamental  characteristics  of  conscious  life — as  the 
primary  fact  in  the  universe,  it  makes  the  idea  of  law 
derivative  from  that  of  activity.  This  is  the  form  in  which 
the  theory  meets  us  in  Professor  Ward's  recent  Gifford 
Lectures  on  Pluralism  and  Theism.  Professor  Ward  pre- 
sents it,  in  the  first  instance,  as  developed  by  those  whom  he 
calls  Pluralists,  some  of  whom  might  also  be  described  as 
Pragmatists ;  but,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  he  accepts  the 
main  position  as  his  own.  On  this  view,  then,  we  do  not 
start  with  an  established  order,  a  reign  of  law,  or  system  of 
conditions  within  which  purposive  action  (and  all  action) 
takes  place.  Pluralism,  we  are  told,1  '  attempts  to  get 
behind  all  this  ' ;  it  '  undertakes  to  explain  how  this  orderli- 
ness has  itself  been  developed  '.  The  fixed  laws  and  stable 
arrangements  of  the  world  have  been  gradually  evolved, 
1  Cf.  The  Realm  of  Ends,  or  Pluralism  and  Theism,  pp.  67-9. 


i84         IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM         LECT. 

it  is  contended,  as  a  result  of  the  behaviour  to  one  another 
of  the  active  individuals  which  ultimately  compose  the 
universe.  They  represent  the  result,  that  is  to  say,  of  the 
action  and  reaction  of  these  psychical  individua  in  their 
struggle  for  the  best  modus  vivendi.1  Professor  Ward  ap- 
plies here  the  idea,  so  prominent  in  his  own  '  Psychology ', 
of  habits  and  automatisms  as  essentially  secondary  forma- 
tions— deposits,  so  to  speak,  of  actions  originally  due  to 
subjective  selection.  This  idea  is,  of  course,  both  true  and 
fruitful,  as  commonly  applied  in  psychology  and  biology. 
But  extending  the  conception  beyond  the  usual  psychologi- 
cal and  biological  limits,  Professor  Ward  seems  to  accept, 
or  at  least  seriously  to  entertain,  the  statement  which  he 
quotes  from  C.  S.  Peirce  that  *  matter  is  effete  mind,  in- 
veterate habits  becoming  physical  laws  '.  He  speaks  re- 
peatedly of  nature  in  this  sense  as  '  plastic ',  and  adapts 
the  old  scholastic  distinction  of  natura  naturata  and  natura 
naturans  to  express  his  meaning.  '  What  is  done,  natura 
naturata — the  decisions  made,  the  habits  formed,  the  cus- 
toms fixed — constitutes  at  any  stage  the  routine,  the  general 
trend  of  things,  within  which  future  possibilities  lie.  What 
is  still  to  do,  natura  naturans,  implies  further  spontaneity 
and  growth — new  decisions  to  be  taken,  fresh  experiments 
to  be  made,  with  their  usual  sequel  of  trial  and  error  and 
possible  eventual  success.' 

But  in  the  attempt  to  derive  all  laws  from  previous 
actions,  this  ultra-pragmatism  appears  to  overleap  itself; 
for  surely  the  very  consolidation  of  actions  into  habits 
depends  upon  the  pre-existence  of  a  stable  system  of  con- 
ditions. What  meaning  can  we  attach  to  actions  in 
abstracto,  apart  from  any  environment?  The  laudable  de- 
sire to  save  spontaneity  and  freedom  seems,  by  denying 
necessity  altogether,  to  fall  into  the  other  extreme  of  pure 
chance.  It  would  obviously  be  unfair  to  make  Professor 
1  The  Realm  of  Ends,  or  Pluralism  and  Theism,  p.  80. 


ix  PURE  CHANCE  185 

Ward  responsible  for  everything  that  Mr.  Peirce  may  say, 
but  some  of  the  passages  in  the  article  from  which  the 
above  quotation  was  taken,1  and  in  particular  its  conclusion, 
are  too  remarkable  to  be  passed  over  without  notice. 
'  Law  ',  says  Mr.  Peirce,  '  is  par  excellence  the  thing  that 
wants  a  reason ' ;  and  so  he  sets  about  *  accounting  for  the 
laws  of  nature  and  for  uniformity  in  general ',  i.  e.  for  the 
fact  of  law  or  order  at  all.  The  only  possible  way  of  account- 
ing for  them,  he  proceeds,  is  '  to  suppose  them  results  of 
evolution ' ;  and  he  adds  that  '  this  supposes  them  not  to 
be  absolute,  not  to  be  obeyed  precisely.  It  makes  an  ele- 
ment of  indeterminacy,  spontaneity  or  absolute  chance  in 
nature.'  And  the  article  concludes  with  this  startling  picture 
of  the  way  in  which  we  may  conceive  the  generation  of 
law  and  order,  the  growth  of  cosmos  out  of  chaos :  '  In 
the  beginning,  infinitely  remote,'  we  may  suppose,  *  there 
was  a  chaos  of  unpersonalised  feeling  which,  being  without 
connection  or  regularity,  would  properly  be  without  exist- 
ence.2 This  feeling,  sporting  here  and  there  in  pure  arbi- 
trariness, would  have  started  the  germ  of  a  generalising 
tendency.  Its  other  sportings  would  be  evanescent,  but  this 
would  have  a  growing  virtue.  Thus  the  tendency  to  habit 
would  be  started;  and  from  this,  with  the  other  principles 
of  evolution,  all  the  regularities  of  the  universe  would  be 
evolved.  At  any  time,  however,  an  element  of  pure  chance 
survives,  and  will  remain  until  the  world  becomes  an 
absolutely  perfect,  rational  and  symmetrical  system,  in 
which  mind  is  at  last  crystallised  in  the  infinitely  distant 
future.' 

I  will  not  trust  myself  to  characterize  this  extraordinary 
attempt  to  evolve  out  of  pure  chaos  the  very  conditions  of 


1 '  The  Architectonic  of  Theories '  in  the  Monist,  January  1891,  vol.  i, 
p.  161  el  seq. 

2  What  this  means  I  confess  I  do  not  understand;  presumably  it  de- 
pends on  some  idiosyncrasy  in  Mr.  Peirce's  terminology. 


186         IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM          LECT. 

evolution  itself.  I  should  not  have  thought  it  worth  men- 
tioning, indeed,  but  for  Professor  Ward's  approving  quota- 
tion from  the  article.  Professor  Ward  himself,  it  is  fair  to 
say,  while  he  notes  that  certain  pluralists,  ill-advised,  as 
he  deems  them,  have  not  hesitated  to  draw  this  conclusion 
of  absolute  contingency,  and  have  even  proposed  the  term 
'  Tychism '  to  describe  their  doctrine,  denies  the  start 
with  chaos,  and  introduces  a  distinction  between  what  he 
calls  the  contingency  of  chance  and  the  contingency  of  free- 
dom.1 But  so  long  as  he  maintains  the  foregoing  account 
of  the  origin  of  physical  law,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  he 
can  logically  escape  the  consequences  which  he  repudiates. 
And  one  cannot  forget  that  Professor  Ward,  both  in  his 
earlier  course  of  Gifford  Lectures  and  in  this  one,  has  lent 
his  countenance  to  the  idea  of  contingency,  by  represent- 
ing the  uniformity  of  natural  law  as  comparable  to  that 
of  a  statistical  average,  which  gives  results  that  are  con- 
stant for  large  aggregates  but  cover  an  indefinite  amount  of 
variation  in  individual  cases.  Statistical  results,  as  he  puts 
it  in  his  recent  volume  2,  '  frequently  hide  the  diversity  and 
spontaneity  of  animated  beings  when  they  and  their  actions 
are  taken  en  masse.  This  diversity  and  spontaneity  '  (he 
adds)  '  are  held  to  be  fundamental :  and  the  orderliness 
and  regularity  we  now  observe,  to  be  the  result  of  conduct, 
not  its  presupposition.'  But,  at  the  atomic  level  contem- 
plated, it  is  difficult  to  see  what  scope  there  is  for  spon- 
taneity, unless  it  is  taken  to  mean  a  power  of  reacting 
differently  in  identical  circumstances;  for  a  different  mode 
of  reaction  to  a  different  stimulus  is  just  what  is  implied 
in  the  idea  of  law  which  it  is  sought  to  repudiate  or  get 
behind.  Professor  Bosanquet,  who  traverses  this  whole 
line  of  argument,  points  out  that  relevancy,  rather  than 
uniformity,  is  the  proper  designation  of  the  scientific  postu- 

1  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  454.    Cf.  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  ii,  p.  281. 
*  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  433. 


ix  RELEVANCY,  NOT  UNIFORMITY  187 

late  of  law,  i.  e.  appropriate  reaction,  remaining  the  same 
doubtless  when  the  circumstances  are  the  same,  but  vary- 
ing with  every  change  of  circumstance — the  principle,  in 
short,  that  '  for  every  difference  there  must  be  a  reason  '. 
So  that  fineness  of  adjustment,  precision  and  relevancy  of 
determinate  response,  should  mean  at  once  the  perfection 
of  the  living  intelligence  and  the  completest  realization  of 
law.  To  take  spontaneity  in  any  other  sense  '  sets  us  wrong 
ab  initio  in  our  attitude  to  the  characteristics  of  conscious- 
ness, teaching  us  to  connect  it  with  eccentricity  and  caprice 
instead  of  with  system  and  rationality  V  The  argument 
from  statistics  seems  intended  to  prove  that  the  uniformity 
on  the  whole  which  appears  in  physical  movements  is  a 
mere  average,  each  individual  movement  being  due  to  the 
'  spontaneity  '  of  the  individual  particle  and  varying  pos- 
sibly in  one  direction  or  the  other,  and  in  greater  or  less 
degree,  from  the  mean  which  the  law  formulates.  But 
what  is  gained  for  the  cause  of  spiritual  freedom  by  endow- 
ing particles  with  a  spontaneity  of  this  kind,  it  is  not  easy 
to  see.  Action  cannot  be  intelligibly  considered  apart  from 
the  ideas  of  stimulus  and  response,  and  when  it  is  so  con- 
sidered, spontaneity  can  only  mean  unhampered  response 
according  to  the  joint  nature  of  the  interacting  factors. 
The  idea  of  spontaneity  in  the  abstract,  apart  from  such 
a  reference,  must  reduce  itself  to  sheer  wil fulness,  and  lead 
us  back  to  Peirce's  conception  of  '  feeling  sporting  here  and 
there  in  pure  arbitrariness  '.  A  system  of  unvarying  natural 
order  is  demanded,  it  may  be  pointed  out,  in  the  service  of 
the  higher  conscious  life  itself  as  the  condition  of  reason- 
able action.  It  is  instructive,  for  example,  to  observe 
Hume  complaining  of  the  pains  and  hardships  which  come 
to  individuals  from  '  the  conducting  of  the  world  by  general 
laws  '  and  admitting  in  the  same  breath  that  '  if  every- 
thing were  conducted  by  particular  volitions,  the  course  of 

1  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  94. 


i88         IDEALISM  AND  PAN-PSYCHISM         LECT. 

nature  would  be  perpetually  broken,  and  no  man  could 
employ  his  reason  in  the  conduct  of  life  V 

Much  the  same  criticism  applies  to  the  general  theory 
of  Monadism,  if  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion.  What 
are  we  to  make  of  those  monads  towards  the  lower  limit, 
those  bare  or  naked  monads,  as  Leibnitz  called  them,  which 
are  simply  a  mens  momentanea,  without  memory  or  the 
power  of  profiting  by  experience,  and  which  therefore  can 
only  react  immediately  and  to  what  is  immediately  given? 
If,  in  Professor  Ward's  words,  they  are  '  beings  which  have 
only  external  relations  to  one  another,  or  rather  for  which 
as  the  limit  of  our  regress,  the  distinction  of  internal  and 
external  ceases  to  hold  ',  how  does  their  behaviour  to  one 
another  differ  from  a  case  of  mechanical  interaction  as 
ordinarily  understood?  And  if  the  two  are  indistinguish- 
able, what  is  the  use  of  the  monadistic  construction? 
Might  we  not  as  well  have  accepted  the  realm  of  physical 
law  to  begin  with,  as  the  substructure  of  the  spiritual, 
and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  the  necessary  presupposition  of 
individual  experience?  On  the  hypothesis  of  Pan-psychism, 
it  has  been  said,2  '  what  becomes  of  the  material  incidents 
of  life — of  our  food,  our  clothes,  our  country,  our  bodies? 
Is  it  not  obvious  that  our  relation  to  these  things  is  essential 
to  finite  being,  and  that  if  they  are  in  addition  subjective 
psychical  centres  their  subjective  psychical  quality  is  one 
which,  so  far  as  realized,  would  destroy  their  function  and 
character  for  us  ?  '  In  other  words,  it  is  as  things,  as  exter- 
nalities, that  they  function  in  our  life,  not  as  other  selves; 
if  we  had  to  treat  them  as  other  selves,  their  characteristic 
being  would  disappear.  We  conclude,  therefore,  that  ab- 
solutely nothing  is  gained,  and  much  confusion  is  intro- 
duced, by  resolving  external  nature  into  an  aggregate  of 
tiny  minds  or,  still  worse,  of  '  small  pieces  of  mind-stuff '. 

1  Dialogues,  Part  II. 

1  Bosanquet,  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  363.    Cf.  p.  194. 


ix       A  CONFLICT  WITH  COMMON  SENSE       189 

It  is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  Idealism  that  nature  as 
a  whole  should  be  recognized  as  complementary  to  mind, 
and  possessing  therefore  no  absolute  existence  of  its  own 
apart  from  its  spiritual  completion;  just  as  mind  in  turn 
would  be  intellectually  and  ethically  void  without  a  world 
to  furnish  it  with  the  materials  of  knowledge  and  of  duty. 
Both  are  necessary  elements  of  a  single  system.1 


1  See  Supplementary  Note  A  to  Second  Edition,  p.  419. 


LECTURE  X 
IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM 

A  FURTHER  point  requires  elucidation.  The  conclusion 
we  have  reached — the  doctrine  of  the  self-conscious  life  as 
organic  to  the  world  or  of  the  world  as  finding  completion 
and  expression  in  that  life,  so  that  the  universe,  as  a  com- 
plete or  self-existent  fact,  is  statable  only  in  terms  of  mind — 
this  is  the  doctrine  historically  known  as  Idealism,  some- 
times described  in  recent  discussion  as  objective,  tran- 
scendental or  absolute  Idealism,  according  to  its  historical 
origin  and  colouring  or  the  special  emphasis  of  the  con- 
troversy. But  Idealism  also  means  historically  the  doctrine 
that  the  being  of  things  is  dependent  on  their  being  known 
— the  familiar  Berkeleian  doctrine  that  esse  is  percipi,  or, 
as  some  later  transcendentalists  have  modified  it,  that 
esse  is  intelligi — which  yields  directly  Berkeley's  further 
position  that  the  existence  of  unthinking  things  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms,  and  therefore,  as  he  puts  it,  '  nothing 
properly  but  Persons,  i.e.  conscious  things,  do  exist.  All  other 
things  are  not  so  much  existences  as  manners  of  the  exis- 
tence of  persons  '-1  This  position,  in  the  typical  form 
given  to  it  by  Berkeley,  is  more  specifically  known  as  Sub- 
jective Idealism,  but  the  fundamental  argument  on  which 
it  is  based — the  dependence  of  being  on  being  known — re- 

*In  the  Commonplace  Book,  Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  59  ( Eraser's  edition 
of  1901).  Cf.  Mr.  Bradley's  statements  (Appearance  and  Reality,  p. 
144)  :  '  We  perceive,  on  reflection,  that  to  be  real,  or  even  barely  to 
exist,  must  be  to  fall  within  sentience.  Sentient  experience,  in  short, 
is  reality,  and  what  is  not  this  is  not  real.  .  .  .  Feeling,  thought,  and 
volition  .  .  .  are  all  the  material  for  existence.'  Professor  Taylor 
uses  similar  language  in  his  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  p.  347 '•  'We  are 
already  agreed  that  reality  is  exclusively  composed  of  psychical  fact.' 
But  see  Supplementary  Note  B.,  p.  420. 


x  MENTALISM  versus  REALISM  191 

mains  the  same  in  those  transcendental  theories  which 
endeavour  to  avoid  the  private  or  individualistic  character 
of  Berkeley's  doctrine  by  bringing  in  an  All-Knower  to 
maintain  in  existence  the  world  of  objects  which  we  recog- 
nize in  common,  and  which  we  usually  think  of  as  existing 
quite  irrespective  of  whether  they  are  known  or  not  known. 
For  this  characteristic  position  the  term  Mentalism,  which 
we  appear  to  owe  to  the  late  Professor  Sidgwick,1  would 
seem  to  be  a  more  appropriate  name  than  the  overdriven 
and  many-coloured  term  Idealism,  and  I  propose  to  use 
it  consistently  in  that  sense  throughout  the  present  lecture. 
Mentalism,  in  its  older  form,  was  the  object  of  Thomas 
Reid's  attack  in  this  very  University  of  Aberdeen  a  century 
and  a  half  ago;  and  it  is  matter  of  common  knowledge  that 
the  opening  years  of  the  twentieth  century  have  been 
marked,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  by  a  strong  attack 
on  the  fundamental  tenet  of  Mentalism  on  the  part  of 
thinkers  who  call  themselves  Realists  or  Neo-Realists.  Into 
the  whole  of  this  controversy  it  would  be  impossible,  as 
well  as  hardly  relevant,  to  enter  here.  But  I  feel  it  to  be 
important,  if  misconception  is  to  be  avoided,  to  free  the 
position  I  am  defending  from  any  supposed  dependence  on 
the  Mentalistic  doctrines  which  have  often  been  used  to 
support  it,  but  which  I  agree  with  the  Realists  in  considering 
untenable. 

First,  then,  we  must  admit  that  the  argument  so  per- 
suasively stated  by  Berkeley  is  essentially  circular.  We 
cannot  conceive  the  existence  of  material  things  apart  from 

1  In  his  posthumous  lectures  on  Philosophy,  its  Scope  and  Relations, 
Sidgwick  extends  the  scope  of  the  term  so  as  to  include  not  only  Sensa- 
tionalists and  Idealists  (whom  he  calls  Pure  Mentalists),  but  also  Phe- 
nomenalists  or  Relativists,  who  do  not  deny  the  existence  of  matter  in- 
dependently of  mind,  but  hold  that  we  can  have  no  knowledge  of  it  as  so 
existing.  See  pp.  61-2.  The  term  is  not  to  be  found  in  Baldwin's  Dic- 
tionary of  Philosophy,  but  I  note  that  Professor  Bosanquet  has  recently 
employed  it  in  his  Adamson  Lecture  on  The  Distinction  between  Mind 
and  its  Objects  (1913). 


IQ2  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

a  mind  which  perceives  or  knows  them,  because,  as  Berkeley 
himself  puts  it,  we  are  trying  to  '  conceive  them  existing  un- 
conceived  or  unthought  of  ',  which  is  a  plain  contradiction. 
The  mind  in  the  attempt  inevitably  introduces  itself,  but, 
'taking  no  notice  of  itself',  fails  to  observe  that  it  has 
vitiated  the  experiment.  This  is  what  an  American  Realist, 
in  a  phrase  worthy  of  Kant,  in  its  full-flavoured  technicality, 
has  dubbed  '  the  ego-centric  predicament '.  The  Ego  is  the 
centre  of  its  own  world,  the  presupposition  of  all  its  knowl- 
edge; it  is  impossible,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  to  extrude 
it.  But  that  of  itself  decides  nothing  as  to  the  existence  of 
things  before  or  after  they  were  known,  and  apart  from  the 
effort  to  conceive  them.  Berkeley  proves  that  they  cannot 
exist  in  the  knowledge  relation  without  implying  a  mind  or 
ego,  and  also  that  we  cannot  say  anything  about  them  except 
as  known,  so  that  out  of  that  relation  they  are  to  us,  in 
a  Kantian  phrase,  as  good  as  nothing  at  all.  But  this 
method  of  approach  cannot  possibly  prove  that  they  do  not 
exist  out  of  that  relation;  it  cannot  prove  Berkeley's  thesis 
that  being-in-that-relation  constitutes  their  existence.  On 
the  contrary,  we  should  all  say,  prima  facie,  that  being 
known  makes  no  difference  to  the  existence  of  anything  real. 
The  Mentalist  will  no  doubt  admit,  as  Berkeley  himself 
does,  that  things  known  have  an  obvious  independence  of  the 
individual  subject;  but  he  will  still  insist  that  their  being 
consists  in  their  presence  to  a  universal  consciousness,  an 
All-Knower,  who,  by  knowing  them,  maintains  them,  so  to 
speak,  in  existence.  This  is,  more  particularly,  the  tran- 
scendental variety  of  Mentalism.  But  if  knowledge  has  the 
same  meaning  in  the  two  cases,  the  existence  of  a  thing  can 
no  more  depend  on  God's  knowing  it  than  on  my  knowing  it. 
And  hence  it  will  be  noticed  that  most  versions  of  this  theory, 
in  speaking  of  the  universal  Knower,  introduce  phrases 
like  a  creative  consciousness,  a  perceptive  understanding 
which  originates  the  matter  as  well  as  the  form  of  its  objects, 


x  THE  UNIVERSAL  KNOWER  193 

and  so  forth.  But  in  so  doing  they  entirely  alter  the  condi- 
tions. No  doubt  the  phrases  used  are  exceedingly  obscure, 
and  not  always  consistently  applied;  but  the  general  impli- 
cation is  that  the  creative  subject  conveys  into  the  object 
something  of  his  own  being.  Sometimes  the  process  is 
described  as  a  self-externalization  or  outering  of  itself  on  the 
part  of  the  subject.  But  however  it  may  be  described,  it 
is  this  act  which,  as  it  were,  supplies  the  object  to  be  known : 
it  is  not  the  knowing,  as  such,  that  constitutes  or  makes  the 
object.  The  change  in  phraseology  is,  in  short,  a  tacit 
acknowledgement  of  the  principle  that  in  every  case  knowl- 
edge presupposes  a  reality,  which  it  knows  but  does  not 
make.1 

But  the  point  for  us  is  that  this  transcendental  idealism 
is  just  Berkeleian  idealism  in  excelsis,  Berkeleianism  uni- 
versalized and  applied  on  the  cosmic  scale ;  and  the  reasoning 
is,  therefore,  of  the  same  circular  character.  This  may  be 
very  clearly  seen  in  Ferrier's  philosophy,  which  is  perhaps 
the  clearest  statement  of  this  form  of  idealism.  Ferrier  ex- 
pressly recognizes  Berkeley  as  '  the  first  to  swell  the  current 
of  that  mighty  stream  of  tendency  towards  which  all  modern 
meditation  flows,  the  great  gulf  stream  of  Absolute  Ideal- 
ism ' ;  and  in  his  own  theory  he  claims  to  present  Berkeley's 
principle  purged  of  Berkeley's  sensationalism.  Accordingly 
the  central  propositions  of  his  Institutes  all  turn  on  '  the 
inseparability  of  the  objective  and  the  subjective  ',  that  is, 
on  the  necessary  presence  of  the  subject  in  every  act  of 

1  Berkeley  also  has  recourse  to  God,  in  a  more  naive  way,  to  account 
for  the  persistence  of  objects  in  the  intervals  of  finite  percipience  and,  in 
general,  for  the  permanence  and  order  of  the  material  world.  But  it  will 
be  remembered  that  he  gives  no  account  of  the  mode  in  which  sensible 
objects  are  present  to  the  divine  consciousness;  this  apparently  occurred 
to  him  as  a  difficulty  after  his  chief  works  were  written,  for  he  touches 
upon  it  in  Siris.  In  general,  he  treats  our  sense-experience  simply  as  an 
effect  of  the  divine  will,  and  this  may  perhaps  be  taken  as  another  way 
of  acknowledging  that  more  than  knowledge  is  implied  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  any  reality. 


194  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

knowledge.  '  Object  plus  subject  is  the  absolute  in  cogni- 
tion,' the  unit  in  knowledge ;  '  matter  mecum,'  he  other- 
wise expresses  it,  '  thoughts  or  mental  states  together  with 
the  self  or  subject.'  *  Matter  per  sc  (and  the  same  applies  to 
an  Ego  per  se)  thus  '  lapses  into  a  contradiction;  it  becomes 
a  mere  absurdity  ' ;  'it  is  not  simply  the  inconceivable  by 
us,  but  the  absolutely  inconceivable  in  itself.'  And  the  con- 
clusion thus  based  upon  the  analysis  of  knowledge  in  the 
first  part  of  the  work  (the  Epistemology)  is  translated  in.the 
third  part  into  an  Ontology  or  theory  of  Being :  'Absolute 
existence  is  the  synthesis  of  the  subject  and  the  object  .  .  . 
the  concentration  of  the  Ego  and  non-ego;  in  other  words, 
the  only  true  and  real  and  independent  existences  are  minds- 
together-with-that-which-they-apprehend.'  And  the  one  ab- 
solute existence  which  is  strictly  necessary  is  '  a  supreme 
and  infinite  and  everlasting  Mind  in  synthesis  with  all 
things  '.2  The  whole  volume,  with  its  elaborate  series  of 
propositions  and  demonstrations,  is  too  patently  only  a 
statement  and  re-statement  of  the  ego-centric  predicament. 
Moreover,  the  result  of  this  line  of  argument,  even  if  we  were 
to  take  it  as  legitimately  reached,  seems  more  valuable  than 
it  is;  for  the  Ego  gained,  whether  human  or  divine,  is  no 
more  than  the  bare  form  of  consciousness.  In  our  analysis 
we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  become  the  victims  of  the  eye- 
metaphor,  the  spectator-theory  of  consciousness.  Instead 
of  treating  the  subject  as  the  organic  unity  of  the  psychical 
content,  this  theory  lifts  it  out  of  the  living  process  alto- 
gether, and  sets  it  like  a  static  eye  in  position  over  against 
its  states  or  ideas,  to  which  it  is  related,  accordingly,  as 
a  kind  of  abstract  and  unchanging  unit  or  point  of  reference. 
The  Ego,  we  are  told,  is  not  the  ideas  and  states,  it  has  them. 
But  an  Ego  or  subject  thus  conceived  stands  in  a  merely 

1  Institutes  of  Metaphysics,  p.  137  (section  i,  proposition  4,  observa- 
tion 13). 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  511,  522  (section  3,  propositions  10  and  ll). 


x  FERRIER  AND  GREEN  195 

external  relation  to  its  content;  it  is  the  abstraction  of  a 
formal  unity  or,  to  vary  the  metaphor,  it  is  like  an  empty 
vessel  into  which  the  content  is  packed.  If  the  proof  of  an 
everlasting  mind  in  synthesis  with  all  things  means  no  more 
than  the  necessity  of  such  an  abstract  point  of  reference,  its 
existence  seems  hardly  worth  contending  for.  And  yet  I  do 
not  think  that  this  kind  of  epistemological  demonstration 
can  yield  us  more. 

We  reach,  I  am  afraid,  a  very  similar  result  in  Green. 
Green's  theory  moves  in  a  Kantian  atmosphere.  His 
Spiritual  Principle  is  directly  derived  from  Kant's  doctrine 
of  the  synthetic  unity  of  apperception  present  in  every  act 
of  knowing.  Green,  perhaps  with  Ferrier  in  his  mind, 
acknowledges  that  it  is  unwarrantable  '  to  assume,  because 
all  reality  requires  thought  to  conceive  it,  that  therefore 
thought  is  the  condition  of  its  existence  '.  But  although  we 
cannot  take  up  this  general  position,  we  may,  he  thinks, 
arrive  at  the  same  result  by  observing  that  what  we  call  the 
real  world  consists  of  things  in  relation  to  one  another,  or, 
as  Green  tends  on  the  whole  to  say,  consists  of  relations.1 
Knowledge  of  relation  implies  '  a  combining  agency  '  or 
'  unifying  principle  '  which,  while  maintaining  the  distinction 
of  the  terms,  produces  '  a  real  unity  of  the  manifold  '  by 
setting  them  in  relation  to  one  another,  viewing  them,  for 
example,  as  successive  or  co-existent,  as  similar,  or  as  related 
in  the  way  of  cause  and  effect — related,  in  short,  in  some 
one  of  the  many  ways  which  constitute  facts  members  of 
a  common  world.  And  as  we  are  obliged  to  believe  that 
relations  are  somehow  real  apart  from  our  individual  knowl- 
edge of  them,  '  we  must  recognize  as  the  condition  of  this 
reality  the  action  of  some  unifying  principle  analogous  to 
that  of  our  understanding  *;  for  '  relations  can  only  exist  for 

1  He  identifies  '  the  conception  of  nature '  with  that  '  of  a  single  all- 
inclusive  system  of  relations  ',  and  formulates  his  inquiry,  '  What  is  im- 
plied in  there  being  such  a  single  all-inclusive  system  of  relations?' 
(Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  30). 


196  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

a  thinking  consciousness  V  The  synthetic  unity  is  thus 
taken  to  be  '  the  basis  not  merely  of  our  knowledge  of  uni- 
form relations  between  phenomena  but  of  there  being  those 
uniform  relations.  The  source  of  the  relations  and  the 
source  of  our  knowledge  of  them  is  one  and  the  same,'  '  the 
consciousness  [namely]  which  constitutes  reality  and  makes 
the  world  one,'  '  the  all-uniting  consciousness  '.  Relations 
'  only  exist  for  or  through  the  action  of  [this]  unifying  and 
self -distinguishing  spiritual  subject '.  Consciousness,  he  says 
again,  is  '  the  medium  and  sustainer '  of  relations.  The 
eternal  consciousness  is  '  the  spirit  for  which  the  relations 
of  the  universe  exist  '.2 

Now,  as  William  James  in  his  character  of  '  radical 
empiricist ',  so  often  pointed  out,  this  argument  really 
starts  from  the  assumption  of  atomistic  and  unrelated 
sensations,  such  as  we  find  it,  for  example,  in  Locke  and 
Hume.  According  to  this  defunct  psychology  (which  was,  it 
must  be  remembered,  the  presupposition  and  the  raison  d'etre 
of  the  Kantian  scheme),  what  is  given  to  us  in  sensation  is 
mere  multiplicity  or  disjunction.  All  unity  and  relatedness 
thus  comes  to  be  explained,  by  Hume,  as  a  fiction  of  the 
imagination,  and,  by  Kant,  as  superinduced  upon  the  mat- 
ter of  sense  by  the  synthetic  activity  of  thought.  Thought, 
in  Green's  phrase,  is  '  the  combining  agency  '  which,  acting 
as  it  were  ab  extra  on  the  sensational  flux,  transforms  it 
into  a  world  of  permanently  related  objects.  But,  as  James 
quite  unanswerably  urges,  if  relations  between  objects  are 
in  any  way  real,  they  must  be  represented  in  feeling  just 
as  much  as  the  objects  which  are  said  to  be  related.  '  We 
ought  to  say  a  feeling  of  "  and  ",  a  feeling  of  "if  ",  a 
feeling  of  "  but  ",  and  a  feeling  of  "  by  ",  quite  as  readily 
as  we  say  a  feeling  of  blue  or  a.  feeling  of  cold/  And  it 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  pp.  32,  53. 

7  These  quotations  are  all  from  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  the 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics.  See  in  particular  pp.  35,  43,  52-3,  68,  78. 


x  GREEN'S  SPIRITUAL  PRINCIPLE  197 

may  be  taken  as  admitted  in  recent  discussion  that  thought, 
in  operating  upon  sense  and  transforming  it,  as  it  undoubt- 
edly does,  does  not  infuse  into  sense  anything  which  was 
not  already  there  in  sensuous  form.1  The  unity  of  experi- 
ence, so  far  as  it  is  unified  and  connected,  is  just  as  real 
and  primitive  a  fact  as  its  variety,  and  we  do  not  require 
the  apparatus  of  a  special  principle  to  constitute  and  sus- 
tain relations  any  more  than  to  sustain  existence  in  general. 
Green's  argument,  therefore,  reduces  itself  to  that  of  Fer- 
rier  for  '  an  everlasting  mind  in  synthesis  with  all  things '. 
Green's  eternal  consciousness,  moreover,  is  described 
exactly  as  if  it  were  an  enlarged  human  mind,  built  upon 
the  same  pattern  of  relational  thought,  but  having  spread 
out  before  it  a  complete  intellectual  scheme  of  the  cosmic 
relations,  which  is  partially  and  intermittently  present 
to  finite  minds — '  communicated  '  to  them,  as  he  frequently 
says,  by  this  eternal  spiritual  principle.  But  we  want  more 
than  a  conceptual  scheme  of  this  sort  to  give  us  the  kind 
of  reality  and  independence  which  all  theories  are  forced 
to  attribute  to  the  world  of  sense-perception.  To  think  of 
the  world  as  a  permanent  presentation,  self -presented  to 
an  eternal  percipient,  does  not  meet  the  case,  unless  we 
confer  upon  the  presentation  just  that  degree  of  distinct 
and  independent  being  which  makes  it  a  real  object  con- 
templated by  the  eternal  percipient,  and  therefore  capable 
of  being  similarly  contemplated  by  other  minds.  Green's 
own  account  is  extremely  vague  as  to  the  sense  in  which 
he  understands  the  spiritual  principle  to  '  sustain '  and 

*  constitute '   nature.    He   talks   of   it  most   frequently  as 

*  present  to '  the  facts,  and  by  its  presence  relating  them 
to  one  another.    He  talks  at  other  times — pretty  frequently 
— of  the   '  action '   or  the   '  activity '   of  the  principle  in 

*  constituting  '  or  *  making  '  nature ;  but  the  agency  appears 
on  examination  to  be  simply  the  combining  and  relating 

1  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  245.    Cf .  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  pp.  42-4. 


198  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

activity  in  knowledge — '  the  unifying  action  of  spirit  '— 
from  which  he  started.1 

In  fact,  the  more  closely  we  examine  Green's  statements, 
the  more  unsatisfactory  appears  the  result  reached  by  his 
argument.  He  talks  of  it  habitually  as  a  spiritual  prin- 
ciple, and  describes  it  more  fully  as  '  a  single  active  self-con- 
scious principle  ',2  or,  as  he  puts  it  in  the  closing  sentence 
of  his  long  Introduction  to  Hume :  '  The  recognition  of  a 
system  of  nature  logically  carries  with  it  that  of  a  self- 
conscious  subject — the  designation  of  which  as  "  mind  ",  as 
"  human  ",  as  "  personal  ",  is  of  secondary  importance,  but 
which  is  eternal,  self-determined,  and  thinks.'  But  the 
nature  of  the  transcendental  argument  is  enough  to  remind 
us  that,  as  it  is  with  reference  to  the  system  of  nature  that 
the  principle  has  been  deduced,  it  is  nothing  out  of  that 
reference,  and  it  is  what  in  that  reference  it  does.  Now 
what  it  does  in  relation  to  the  manifold  world  is  simply  to 
unify  it.  Hence  the  designation  of  the  principle  almost 
ad  nauseam  in  English  Hegelian  writers  as  '  a  principle  of 
unity  '.  The  unity  of  apperception,  Kant  teaches  in  his 
Deduction,  is  precisely  equivalent  to  the  idea  of  nature  as  a 
unity,  or  at  least  the  one  idea  is  the  obverse  of  the  other. 
So  Green  tells  us :  '  That  the  unifying  principle  should  dis- 
tinguish itself  from  the  manifold  which  it  unifies  is,  indeed, 
the  condition  of  the  unification;  but  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  the  manifold  has  a  nature  of  its  own  apart  from 
the  unifying  principle,  or  this  principle  another  nature  of 

1  p.  43.  On  p.  34  it  is  described  as  '  an  agent  which  distinguishes  itself 
from  the  feelings,  uniting  them  in  their  severalty,  making  them  equally 
present  in  their  succession '.  Cf.  p.  53 :  '  the  consciousness  which  con- 
stitutes reality  and  makes  the  world  one  '.  In  a  different  context  (p.  78) 
he  speaks  of  our  partial  knowledge  of  the  universe  as  rendered  possible 
through  'the  continued  action  of  the  eternal  consciousness  in  and  upon 
the  sentient  life '.  But  the  reference  here  is  to  the  ideal  of  completed 
knowledge  as  operative  in  a  growing  experience;  and  the  expression, 
therefore,  does  not  bear  on  the  question  we  are  specially  considering. 


x  THE  EMPTY  FORM  OF  THE  EGO  199 

its  own  apart  from  what  it  does  in  relation  to  the  manifold 
world.  .  .  .  There  is  no  separate  particularity,  in  the  agent, 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  determined  world  as  a  whole,  on  the 
other.  .  .  .  The  world  has  no  character  but  that  given  it  by 
this  action,  tHe  agent  no  character  but  that  which  it  gives 
itself  in  this  action.'  1  Consequently,  as  he  says  in  another 
place,  '  the  concrete  whole  may  be  described  indifferently  as 
an  eternal  intelligence  realised  in  the  related  facts  of  the 
world  or  as  a  system  of  related  facts  rendered  possible  by 
such  an  intelligence  '.2  'All  things  in  the  world  are  deter- 
mined by  it,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  determined  by  each 
other  in  a  manner  that  would  be  impossible  but  for  its  equal 
self-distinguishing  presence  to  them  all.' 3  As  such  an 
impartial  presence,  the  eternal  consciousness  becomes,  in  a 
phrase  of  Mr.  Bal four's,  just  '  the  bare  geometrical  point 
through  which  must  pass  all  the  threads  which  make  up  the 
web  of  nature';4  or,  as  we  may  say,  it  is  the  ideal  focus 
into  which  the  system  of  relations  is  reflected,  the  empty 
form  of  the  Ego  or  consciousness  in  general,  the  dot  upon 
the  i,  which  the  theory  of  knowledge  exacts.5 

This  is  the  same  result  as  we  reached  before  in  Ferrier's 
case,  and  it  seems  to  confirm  our  view  of  the  fallacious 
character  of  any  direct  argument  from  the  conditions  of 
knowledge  to  the  theorem  of  an  All-Thinker  and  of  the 
universe  as  the  system  of  his  thought.  It  confirms  also  the 
nugatory  nature  of  any  conclusion  that  could  possibly  be 
reached  by  such  a  method,  even  if  valid.  The  formal  Ego, 
which  is  all  that  the  mentalistic  argument  yields,  is  of  no 
real  account.  What  difference  does  it  make  whether  we 


1  pp.  80-1.  2  p.  38.  *  p.  82  (italics  mine). 

4  In  an  article  on  '  Green's  Metaphysics  of  Knowledge ',  Mind,  vol.  ix, 
p.  89  (1884). 

6  So  Caird  speaks  of  the  consciousness  of  God  (which,  he  is  insisting, 
is  involved  in  the  consciousness  of  self)  as  '  the  consciousness  of  the 
universal  unity  or  centre  which  all  knowledge  implies  '  (Critical  Philos- 
ophy of  Kant,  vol.  i,  p.  215). 


200  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

regard  nature  as  existing  per  se,  or  insist  that  all  her  proc- 
esses are  registered  in  a  mind,  if  that  mind  is  nothing  but 
such  a  register  or  impartial  reflection  of  the  facts?  I  do 
not  think,  therefore,  that  any  such  short  cut  to  the  desired 
goal  is  likely  to  take  us  there.  Ultimately,  i  believe  it  is 
true,  as  I  have  argued  all  along,  that  we  cannot  take  nature 
as  existing  per  se ;  it  has  to  be  taken  as  an  element  in  a  whole 
which  cannot  be  expressed  except  in  terms  of  conscious 
values.  All  values  depend  on  feeling,  on  some  form  of 
consciousness  or  living  experience.  Familiar  with  values  in 
our  own  experience,  we  feel  it  impossible  to  conceive  any- 
thing devoid  of  value  (such  as  an  unconscious  material 
system  would  be)  as  ultimately  real  or  self-subsistent,  in 
other  words,  as  a  whole,  a  res  completa.  It  is  this  moral  im- 
possibility, I  think,  as  much  as  the  speculative  contradiction 
of  a  world  existing  absolutely  unknown,  that  is  the  driving- 
power  of  the  idealistic  argument.  In  both  its  aspects  the 
argument  may  be  impeached  as  circular  in  its  proof.  It  is  not 
so  much  an  argument  perhaps  as  an  absolute  conviction,  but 
it  is,  I  think,  a  conviction  whose  reasonableness  is  sustained 
by  the  unreasonableness  of  the  opposite  hypothesis. 

Spirit,  we  believe,  therefore,  is  the  terminus  ad  quern  of 
nature.  As  it  has  been  finely  expressed  by  an  Eastern 
thinker,  '  all  external  things  were  formed  that  the  soul 
might  know  itself  and  be  free  V  Unconscious  nature  thus 
assumes  the  character  of  a  means  or  intermediary  towards 
an  end,  in  so  far  as  conscious  centres  of  existence  alone 
possess  that  degree  of  separateness  and  independence  which 
would  justify  the  term  creation  in  their  regard.  Such 
terms  as  creation,  means  and  end  demand,  as  we  shall  find, 
a  rigid  scrutiny,  which  may  leave  little  of  their  ordinary 
meaning  attaching  to  them  when  they  are  used  to  describe 
the  ultimate  conditions  of  the  universe.  But  with  that 
reserve  they  still  remain  useful  and  intelligible  modes  of 

1  Kapila  (quoted  in  Professor  A.  G.  Hogg's  Karma  and  Redemption). 


x          THE  LARGER  IDEALISTIC  TRUTH          201 

indicating  a  real  distinction  within  the  world  of  facts  as 
known.  The  instrumental  or  mediating  function  of  the 
material  world  was  the  larger  idealistic  truth  which  underlay 
the  mentalistic  form  of  Berkeley's  argument.  And  that 
may,  I  think,  be  held  along  with  a  frankly  realistic  attitude 
towards  external  nature. 

Hume  epigrammatically  described  Berkeley's  arguments 
as  admitting  of  no  answer  but  producing  no  conviction.  The 
apparent  unanswerability  was  due,  however,  to  the  pre- 
suppositions common  to  both  thinkers ;  and  modern  analysis 
successfully  exposes  the  failure  to  distinguish  in  the  am- 
biguous word  '  idea '  between  the  act  of  knowing  and  the 
object  known,  on  which  ambiguity  Berkeley's  identification 
of  the  object  and  the  sensation  really  rests.1  In  all  knowl- 
edge there  is  the  reference  to  an  object  beyond  the  process 
itself;  and  this  realistic  implication  is  so  imbedded  in  lan- 
guage that  subjective  idealism  achieves  its  apparent  success 
only  by  tacitly  presupposing  the  real  object  which  it  attempts 
to  deny.  The  distinction  between  the  act  or  the  subjective 
process  and  the  object  applies  as  much  to  the  knowledge 
of  our  own  states,  when  these  are  introspectively  observed, 
as  to  the  knowledge  of  anything  else;  and  there  is  no 
justification,  therefore,  for  the  traditional  theory,  on  which 
Mentalism  bases,  that  we  know  only  our  own  states  directly 
and  all  other  things  representatively  through  them.  Knowl- 
edge, as  the  modern  realists  sometimes  say,  is  '  a  unique 
relation ',  which  cannot  be  explained  by  analysing  it  into 
anything  simpler,  or  by  the  use  of  physical  and  quasi-physical 
metaphors.  The  knower  is  everywhere  in  direct  relation 
with  his  object,  and  we  know  all  kinds  of  objects  on 
the  same  terms.  There  is  no  more  difficulty  in  knowing 

1 '  In  truth  the  object  and  the  sensation  are  the  same  thing,  and  cannot 
therefore  be  abstracted  from  each  other'  (Principles  of  Human  Knowl- 
edge, section  5).  This  noteworthy  but  too  dangerous  phraseology  was 
withdrawn  in  the  second  edition. 


202  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  LECT. 

a  material  thing  than  there  is  in  knowing  the  memory- 
image  of  it  or  any  other  purely  subjective  phenomenon. 
The  unconvincingness  of  the  mentalistic  argument  is  due, 
therefore,  to  its  real  unsoundness — a  very  simple  and 
sufficient  explanation,  which  naturally  did  not  occur  to 
Hume. 

And  when  we  are  forced  to  abandon  the  attempt  to 
identify  perceived  objects  with  the  transient  experiences  of 
finite  minds — as  Berkeley  of  course  is  almost  at  once  com- 
pelled to  do — it  is  no  legitimate  way  out  of  the  difficulty 
to  fly  off,  as  he  does,  to  an  ultimate  generality,  and  refer 
them  simpliciter  to  the  will  of  an  Infinite  Spirit,  or  to  treat 
them,  with  Green,  as  thought-relations  permanently  present 
to  such  a  cosmic  Mind.  That  is  to  reverse  the  true  order  of 
going,  and  is  really  an  attempt  to  evade  the  full  consequences 
of  our  failure.  For  an  acknowledgement  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  identifying  the  object  with  our  own  state  should 
have  as  its  result  just  the  recognition  of  the  independent 
reality  of  the  object  as  we  know  it.  Ultimately,  no  doubt, 
as  I  have  said,  if  the  larger  idealism  is  to  be  maintained,  the 
independence  attributed  to  the  material  world  cannot  be 
taken  as  the  assertion  of  its  existence  as  a  brute  fact  per  se. 
It  must  be  seen  as  an  element  in  a  whole,  with  a  specific 
function  within  that  whole.  But  how  this  real  system  of 
externality,  on  which  as  finite  spirits  we  depend,  is  related 
to  or  included  in  an  absolute  experience,  is  necessarily  dark 
to  us;  for  to  answer  such  a  question  would  mean  to  tran- 
scend the  very  conditions  of  our  separate  individuality.  We 
can  but  dimly  apprehend  that,  to  such  an  experience,  nature 
cannot  be  external  in  the  way  in  which  it  necessarily  is  to  the 
finite  minds  which  it  shapes  and  fills  And  just  because 
the  two  experiences  are  not  in  this  respect  in  pari  materia, 
the  mode  in  which  nature  is  included  in  the  Absolute  cannot 
be  expected  to  throw  light  on  the  question  in  debate  between 
mentalist  and  realist.  But,  at  any  rate,  to  treat  the  system 


x  NATURE  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE  203 

of  nature  (as  Berkeley  does)  as  the  effect  in  finite  centres  of 
an  abstract  Will,  is  to  evade  the  real  difficulty  altogether ; * 
and  to  figure  its  ultimate  reality  (as  Green  seems  constantly 
inclined  to  do)  as  that  of  a  system  of  thought-relations  is 
so  astonishingly  meagre  and  incredible  an  account  of  the 
mighty  fact  in  question  that  it  explains  Mr.  Bradley's 
famous  protest  against  the  dissolution  of  the  world  into 
'  some  spectral  woof  of  impalpable  abstractions,  or  un- 
earthly ballet  of  bloodless  categories  \2 

And  if  it  is  unnatural  and  completely  unconvincing  to 
treat  nature  as  a  set  of  ideas  or  intellectual  processes  in 
a  world-mind,  conceived  after  the  pattern  of  our  own,  it 
seems  to  me  no  less  unnatural,  as  I  argued  in  the  previous 
lecture,  to  coin  nature  into  the  small  change  of  an  infinite 
number  of  monads  or  little  minds.  Both  theories  are,  in 
fact,  prompted  by  the  same  difficulty;  and  the  expedient 
adopted  is,  in  principle,  identical.  The  difficulty  is  to  con- 
ceive the  unconscious  thing  with  no  central  unity  of  feeling, 
however  vague,  to  give  it  individuality  and  existence  for 
itself.  And  it  seems  an  easy  way  out  of  the  difficulty  either 
to  put  a  mind — a  speck,  as  it  were,  of  consciousness — 
behind  each  of  the  minutest  atoms  or  ions  into  which 
physical  science  resolves  the  world,  or  to  supply  the  cen- 
trality  by  treating  the  material  system  en  bloc  as  the  object 
of  a  cosmic  mind.  In  both  cases  there  is  the  attempt  to 
escape  from  a  difficulty  by  a  general  hypothesis  which  runs 
counter  to  the  direct  suggestion  of  the  facts,  and  which 
necessarily,  therefore,  '  produces  no  conviction  ' — has  no 
vital  meaning,  that  is  to  say,  for  our  experience.  What 
relevance  has  either  theory  to  the  lapping  of  the  waves,  the 
summer  rain,  or  the  wind  among  the  trees,  to  Nature's 

1  As  Berkeley  himself  at  a  later  period  came  to  realize.  He  touches — 
though  very  slightly — in  Siris  on  the  mode  in  which  nature  may  be  con- 
ceived as  present  to  the  divine  consciousness. 

1  At  the  close  of  his  Logic,  in  1883.  Such  an  abstract  intellectualism, 
he  says,  '  strikes  as  cold  and  ghost-like  as  the  dreariest  materialism '. 


204  IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM  x 

aspects  of  impersonal  vastness,  of  resistless  power,  or  en- 
during peace — 

The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills  ? 

Both  theories  are  intended,  of  course,  as  a  demonstration 
of  the  idealist  contention  that  the  ultimate  reality  of  the 
universe  is  spiritual.  In  both  cases,  however,  the  stress  is 
laid  on  the  bare  form  of  consciousness.  But  the  infinite 
multiplication  of  so-called  conscious  centres,  which  are  ad- 
mittedly no  more  than  the  supposed  inward  aspect  of  purely 
mechanical  reactions — the  dynamics  of  a  particle  in  psycho- 
logical terms — is  no  enrichment  of  the  content  of  the  uni- 
verse. And  nothing  is  gained,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the 
formal  abstraction  of  unity  which  figures  in  the  mentalistic 
demonstrations.  The  content  of  the  universe  is  alone 
worth  contending  for — the  reality  of  infinite  values  open  to 
appropriation  and  enjoyment  by  beings  at  a  certain  level 
of  existence.1 


1  See  Supplementary  Note  C,  p.  420. 


SECOND   SERIES 
1912-13 


LECTURE  XI 

THE  ARGUMENT  OF  THE  FIRST  COURSE. 

THE  LOWER  PANTHEISM  AND  THE  DOCTRINE 

OF  ' DEGREES ' 

THE  survey  taken  and  the  results  reached  in  last  year's 
course  were  of  a  somewhat  general  nature.  In  the  opening 
lecture  we  considered,  as  a  kind  of  historical  background 
and  contrast,  the  remarkable  discussion  of  theism  by  David 
Hume  in  his  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion.  Based 
as  it  was  exclusively  on  the  evidence  of  design  in  external 
nature,  the  attenuated  theism  of  Hume's  conclusion 
afforded,  in  his  own  language,  '  no  inference  that  affects 
human  life  or  can  be  the  source  of  any  action  or  forbear- 
ance/ and  this  seemed  scarcely  what  the  idea  of  God  had 
meant  in  human  experience.  I  then  sought  to  show  that  the 
idea  of  intrinsic  value  or  worth,  which  Kant  found  in  his 
analysis  of  moral  experience,  had  been  of  determining  influ- 
ence upon  the  modern  discussion  of  man's  place  in  the 
scheme  of  things,  thus  shaping  the  view  taken  of  the  ultimate 
character  of  the  universe.  Kant's  own  presentation  of  the 
ideas  of  God  and  immortality  as  postulated  by  our  ethical 
experience  was  defective,  it  was  urged,  owing  to  the  exter- 
nalism  of  his  treatment,  arising  from  the  individualistic 
and  consequently  deistic  habit  of  thought  which  he  shared 
with  Hume  and  the  eighteenth  century  generally.  But 
the  consciousness  of  value — the  assertion  of  the  objectivity 
of  our  fundamental  estimates  of  value — remained  central 
for  Idealism  in  the  long  controversy  with  Naturalism 
which  filled  out  the  nineteenth  century,  and  which  still 
remains  the  specific  form  in  which  the  philosophic  problem 
presents  itself  to  the  modern  mind.  As  Hoffding  states  it, 


208  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

it  is  the  question  of  '  the  relation  between  what  seems 
to  us  men  the  highest  value  and  existence  as  a  whole  '. 
The  Kantian  distinction  between  knowledge  and  belief,  and 
the  restriction  of  knowledge  to  the  world  of  sense-percep- 
tion, as  physical  science  conceives  it,  tended  to  suggest  that 
the  biological  categories  of  life,  the  aesthetic  perceptions 
of  beauty  and  sublimity,  and  the  implications  of  ethical 
experience  were,  after  all,  to  be  contrasted,  as  subjective 
interpretations  and  mere  ideals  or  aspirations,  with  the 
assured  objectivity  of  scientific  knowledge  and  of  the 
mechanical  world-system  which  seemed  to  be  its  last  word. 
Hence  in  many  quarters  the  assertion  of  the  principle  of 
value  took  the  form  of  a  protest  of  the  heart  against  the 
head,  the  feelings  against  the  intellect;  and  in  others,  the 
demands  of  our  ethical  and  aesthetic  nature  were  opposed 
as  a  shadow-land  of  the  poetic  imagination  to  the  harsh 
reality  of  a  scientific  materialism.  But  jjigajs  must  speedily 
wither  if  they  are  consciously  realized  to  be  but  the  cloud- 
land  of  fancy;  ^o  a  true  idealism  they  are  an  intense  vision 
of  the  foundations  on  which  the  universe  is  built  And  we 
endanger  the  principle  of  value  if  we  set  one  part  of  our 
nature  against  another  in  this  way,  and  associate  the  prin- 
ciple with  a  campaign  against  '  intellectualism  '  or,  as  some 
go  the  length  of  saying,  against  Reason.  Any  theory  which 
leaves  us  with  an  irreconcilable  dualism  between  supposed 
conclusions  of  the  intellect  and  the  ethico-religious  inter- 
pretation of  the  world  is  essentially  a  surrender  to  scepticism, 
and  therefore  an  impossible  resting-place  for  the  human 
mind.  Hence  I  urged  that  the  vindication  of  human  values 
could  only  become  effective  and  convincing  when  accom- 
panied by  the  demonstration  that  the  conclusions  of 
Naturalism  rest  on  a  misinterpretation  of  the  character  of 
the  scientific  theories  on  which  it  founds — that  Naturalism, 
in  short,  in  spite  of  its  claims  to  exclusive  reality,  is  no 
more  than  the  substantiation  of  an  abstraction  or  of  a 


xi  THE  HIGHER  NATURALISM  209 

fragment  that  can  exist  only  as  an  element  in  a  larger 
whole.  The  principle  of  value,  in  other  words,  should  be 
the  informing  principle  of  a  coherent  theory  of  reality 
instead  of  being  put  forward  as  a  conviction  which  has, 
as  it  were,  an  independent  root  in  a  separate  part  of  our 
nature,  and  which,  instead  of  issuing  from  reason,  is  repre- 
sented almost  as  a  protest  against  reason. 

The  argument  of  the  lectures  which  followed  was  in  the 
main  directed  to  establish  this  position.  I  showed  in  the 
fourth  lecture  how  the  development  of  biology  as  an  in- 
dependent science  had  demonstrated  the  insufficiency  of 
purely  mechanical  conceptions  to  describe  even  the  most 
elementary  facts  of  life.  In  passing  from  physical  and 
chemical  phenomena  to  the  behaviour  of  living  matter  we 
find  ourselves  instinctively  and  of  necessity  driven  to  a  new 
range  of  categories,  if  we  are,  I  will  not  say  to  explain, 
but  even  accurately  to  describe,  the  characteristic  features 
of  the  facts  before  us.  Such  an  acknowledgement,  I  argued, 
does  not  mean  an  attempt  to  re-introduce  miraculous  inter- 
ferences, unbridgeable  chasms  and  special  creations.  These 
are  the  apparatus  of  an  arbitrary  and  external  Super- 
naturalism,  against  which  the  protest  of  Naturalism  was 
entirely  justified.  Science  and  philosophy  alike  support 
the  demand  for  order  and  continuity.  But  nature,  I  said, 
is  not  the  less  nature,  because  it  exhibits  a  scale  of  quali- 
tative differences;  the  principle  of  continuity  is  misinter- 
preted, if  it  is  supposed  to  imply  a  reduction  of  all  the 
facts  of  experience  to  the  dead  level  of  a  single  type.  It 
is  important,  I  suggested,  to  distinguish  between  the  lower 
and  the  higher  Naturalism.  The  lower  Naturalism  is  that 
which  seeks  to  merge  man  in  the  infra-human  nature  from 
which  he  draws  his  origin — which  consistently  identifies 
the  cause  of  any  fact  with  its  temporal  antecedents,  and 
ultimately  equates  the  outcome  of  a  process  with  its  starting- 
point.  A  higher  Naturalism  will  not  hesitate  to  recognize 


210  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

the  emergence  of  real  differences  where  it  sees  them,  with- 
out feeling  that  it  is  thereby  establishing  an  absolute  chasm 
between  one  stage  of  nature's  processes  and  another.  What 
we  have  to  deal  with  is  the  continuous  manifestation  of  a 
single  Power,  whose  full  nature  cannot  be  identified  with 
the  initial  stage  of  the  evolutionary  process,  but  can  only 
be  learned  from  the  course  of  the  process  as  a  whole,  and 
most  fully  from  its  final  stages.  Although  the  appearance 
of  life  is  a  peculiarly  impressive  instance  of  a  synthesis 
which  refuses  to  be  analysed  into  the  merely  physical  and 
chemical  facts  which  were  its  apparent  antecedents,  it  is  by 
no  means  the  only  one.  Scientific  thinkers,  fighting  against 
the  theological  doctrine  of  special  creation,  have  pointed  to 
the  phenomenon  of  crystallization  as  similarly  inexplicable 
by  the  unguided  forces  of  gravity  and  cohesion.  And  within 
the  realm  of  life  there  is  the  passage  from  the  vegetable  to 
the  animal,  and  in  the  realm  of  consciousness  the  passage 
from  instinct  and  association  to  the  conceptual  reason.  In 
all  these  cases,  questions  of  historical  origin  or  of  transi- 
tional forms  are  philosophically  irrelevant.  _The  philosophi- 
CB\  point  is  that  in  each  case  we  do  pass  to  a  new  plane  or 
level  of  existence,  qualitatively  different  from  the  preceding, 
and  opening  up,  through  that  difference,  a  new  range  o£ 
possibilities  to  the  beings  which  it  includes. 

It  is  between  the  human  intelligence  and  its  antecedent 
conditions,  between  nature  and  man,  that  the  idea  of  a 
chasm  or  absolute  break  is  most  deeply  rooted,  both  in 
philosophy  and  in  ordinary  thought.  But  it  was  the  central 
contention  of  the  later  lectures  of  the  course  that  man 
must  be  taken  as  organic  to  nature.  If  we  consistently 
apply  in  this  case  the  twin  principles  of  continuity  and 
immanence,  I  said,  and  steadily  refuse  to  characterize  the 
nature  of  the  world  till  we  have  all  the  facts  before  us,  some 
of  the  most  persistent  difficulties  of  modern  thought  will 
be  found  to  disappear.  The  nature  of  the  Power  at  work 


xi  MAN  ORGANIC  TO  NATURE  211 

in  any  process  is  only  revealed,  as  has  just  been  said,  in 
the  process  as  a  whole,  and  the  world  is  not  complete 
without  man  and  his  knowledge.  The  idea  of  nature  as 
a  completed  system  and  of  man  as  a  spectator  ab  extra 
is  essentially  false.  The  intelligent  being  is  rather  to  be 
_£egarded  as  the  organ  through  which  the  universe  beholds 
and  enjoys  itself.  From  the  side  of  the  higher  Naturalism, 
I  sought  to  emphasize  man's  rootedness  in  nature,  so  that 
the  rational  intelligence  which  characterizes  him  appears  as 
the  culmination  of  a  continuous  process  of  immanent  devel- 
opment. This  organic  point  of  view  delivers  us,  I  contended, 
from  the  difficulties  which  so  sorely  afflict  modern  philos- 
ophy as  to  the  relativity,  or  subjectivity,  or  phenomenality, 
of  knowledge,  and  the  impossibility  of  knowing  things  as 
they  really  are.  These  difficulties  depend  on  the  conception 
of  the  world  as  a  finished  fact  independently  existing,  and 
an  equally  independent  knower  with  a  peculiar  apparatus  of 
faculties  which  inevitably  colour  and  subjectify  any  fact 
on  which  they  are  brought  to  bear.  Such  a  conception  errs 
also,  I  insisted,  by  treating  the  function  of  intelligence  as 
purely  cognitive,  in  the  sense  of  simply  mirroring  or  dupli- 
cating external  facts,  whereas  all  knowledge  is  an  experi- 
ence of  the  soul,  which,  as  such,  has  necessarily  its  feeling- 
value  ;  and  the  existence  of  such  living  centres  capable 
of  feeling  the  grandeur  and  beauty  of  the  universe  and 
tasting  its  manifold  qualities  is  what  is  alone  really  signify 
cant  in  the  universe.  All  values  are  in  this  sense  consciou 
values;  and  so  it  is  that  the  sentient  and,  still  more,  the 
rational  being  appears  as  the  goal  towards  which  Nature 
is  working,  namely,  £he  development  of  an  organ  by  which 
she  may  become  conscious  of  herself  and  enter  into  the  joy 
of  her  own  being. 

While  rejecting,  therefore,  the  relativity  of  knowledge  in 
the  usual  sense  of  that  doctrine,  J  emphasized  the  essen- 
tial relatedness  of  nature  and  mind  as  the  guarantee  of  the 


212  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

naturalness  of  the. knowledge-process  and  the  truth fuln- 
of  the  result.  I  applied  this  specially  to  the  case  of  the 
secondary  qualities  which  are  usually  regarded  as  the 
stronghold  of  the  relativistic  theory.  Popular  science  and 
popular  philosophy  take  the  physical  scheme  of  moving 
particles  or  ethereal  vibrations  as  the  reality  of  nature 
as  an  objective  system,  all  the  rest  being  merely  subjective 
appearance  to  finite  subjects.  But  the  objectivity  of  the 
secondary  qualities  as  predicates  of  reality  is  affirmed 
both  by  common  sense,  and  by  a  ripe  philosophy.  The 
physiological  process  through  which  knowledge  is  attained 
does  not  invalidate  the  result.  There  is  no  explana- 
tion possible  of  the  evolution  of  the  sense-organs  unless 
we  assume  the  reality  of  the  new  features  of  the  world 
to  which  their  evolution  introduces  us.  £he  organism  is 
developed  and  its  powers  perfected  as  an  instrument  of 
Nature's  purpose  of  self-revelation.  And  what  is  here 
claimed  for  the  secondary  qualities  holds  good  also  of  the 
aspects  of  beauty  and  sublimity  which  we  recognize  in 
nature  and  those  finer  insights  which  we  owe  to  the  poet 
and  the  artist.  These  things  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as 
arbitrary  fancies,  subjective  glosses  upon  nature's  text — on 
the  contrary,  they  give  us  a  deeper  truth  than  ordinary 
vision,  just  as  the  more  developed  eye  or  ear  carries  us 
farther  into  nature's  beauties  and  refinements  than  the  less 
perfect  organs  of  a  lower  species. 

I  applied  the  same  idea  of  organic  relatedness  to  the 
consideration  of  the  ethical  and  social  qualities  which  we 
recognize  as  constituting  our  humanity.  For  if  the  stigma 
of  subjectivity  can  be  attached  with  any  semblance  of 
justice  to  our  knowledge,  it  will  seem  to  apply  with  still 
greater  force  to  the  world  of  values  in  which  our  inmost 
and  most  personal  nature  finds  expression.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  h  \>  between  man's  nature  as  an  ethical 
being  and  ihe  apparently  non-moral  nature  of  the  world 


xi  THE  RELIGION  OF  HUMANITY  213 

from  which  he  springs,  that  the  breach  of  continuity — not 
to  say  the  apparent  opposition — has  been  most  keenly  felt. 
I  drew  attention,  in  this  connexion,  to  the  sharp  expres- 
sion of  this  dualism  between  man  and  nature  in  the  Re- 
ligion of  Humanity,  one  of  the  most  characteristic  prod- 
ucts of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  its  combination  of  a 
lofty  ethical  and  religious  idealism  with  an  ultimate  meta- 
physical agnosticism.  Comte  was  right,  I  urged,  in  the 
stress  he  laid  on  the  distinctively  human  qualities  as  alone 
fitted  to  call  forth  the  emotions  of  love  and  worship — as 
alone,  therefore,  in  a  true  sense,  divine.  His  error  lay  in 
supposing  that  a  purely  subjective  synthesis,  as  he  called 
it,  is  possible — in  other  words,  that  it  is  possible  to  isolate 
humanity  from  the  universe  as  a  whole,  and  to  treat  it 
as  a  self-contained  organism,  evolving  all  its  properties 
and  engineering  all  its  advances  in  its  own  strength  and 
out  of  its  own  particularity.  The  specifically  human  experi- 
ences cannot  be  taken  as  an  excrescence  on  the  universe, 
or  as  a  self-contained  and  underived  world  by  themselves 
with  no  root  in  the  nature  of  things.  Man ,. js1,_after_all, 
the  child  of  nature,  and  it  is  on  the  basis  of  natural 
impulses,  and  in  commerce  with  the  system  of  external 
things,  that  his  ethical  being  is  built  up.  Hence  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  ethical  life  must  be  taken  as  contributing 
to  determine  the  nature  of  the  system  in  which  we  live. 
According  to  the  principle  of  value  and  the  distinction 
between  lower  and  higher  ranges  of  experience,  they  should, 
indeed,  carry  us  nearer  to  a  true  definition  of  the  ultimate 
Life  of  which  we  are  partakers  than  categories  which  suf- 
fice to  describe,  at  most,  the  environmental  conditions  of^ 
human  existence. 

The  further  analysis  which  I  undertook  of  the  Agnosti- 
cism which  forms  one  strand  in  the  Comtian  theory,  and 
which  meets  us  in  so  many  shapes  in  modern  thought,  con- 
sisted of  little  more  (as,  to  my  mind,  it  can  consist  of  little 


214  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

more)  than  an  exposure  of  the  fundamental  absurdity  of 
the  demand  to  know  a  substance  otherwise  than  through 
its  qualities,  a  cause  otherwise  than  through  its  effects, 
reality  otherwise  than  through  its  appearance  or  mani- 
festation. The  phenomenon  is  the  noumenon  so  far  as 
it  has  manifested  itself.  '  The  power  manifested  to  us 
through  all  existence,'  an  '  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy 
manifested  alike  within  us  and  without  us  ',  to  which  '  we 
must  ascribe  not  only  the  manifestations  themselves  but 
the  law  of  their  order'  (those  are  Spencer's  own  words) 
can  hardly  be  fitly  designated  by  that  barren  abstraction, 
the  Unknowable.  The  designation  is  due,  in  part  at  least, 
to  a  failure  on  Spencer's  part,  as  on  Sir  William  Hamilton's 
before  him,  to  distinguish  between  the  inaccessible^  that 
which  is,  by  its  very  nature,  cut  off  from  knowledge, 
and  that  which  is  ^unfathomable  or  inexhaustible  by  any 
finite  mind;  and  it  was  doubtless"  the  positive  elements, 
acknowledged  or  unacknowledged,  in  his  conception  which 
invested  the  Unknowable  in  Spencer's  eyes  with  a  genuine 
religious  halo,  and  made  it  appear  to  him  the  suitable 
residuary  legatee  of  the  religious  sentiments  of  mankind. 
But,  while  he  rightly  condemned  the  attempt  of  the  Posi- 
tivists  to  isolate  Humanity  and  treat  it  as  a  kind  of  finite 
God — while  he  rightly  contends  that  the  veneration  and 
gratitude  which  Comte  claims  for  Humanity  are  due  in 
the  last  resort,  if  due  at  all,  to  '  that  ultimate  Cause, 
that  great  stream  of  Creative  Power  '  as  he  calls  it  in  the 
same  context,  '  from  which  Humanity  individually  and  as 
a  whole,  in  common  with  all  other  things,  has  proceeded  ' — 
he  strangely  fails  to  see  that  it  is  only  so.  far  as  the  char- 
acter of  that  Power  is  taken  to  be  revealed  in  the  highest 
human  qualities  that  it  can  call  forth  either  veneration  or 
gratitude.  And  so  the  worship  of  the  Unknowable  and  the 
worship  of  Humanity,  each  untenable  in  itself,  are  found  to 
owe  their  vitality  (as  we  might  have  expected)  to  the  partia? 


xi  APPEARANCE  AND  REALITY  215 

and  complementary  truths  which  they  respectively  enshrine, 
and  which  are  only  kept  apart  by_  a  distorted  conception  of 
the  relation  of  reality  to  its  appearances. 

The  main  purpose  of  last  year's  argument  might  be 
fairly  described  as  an  attempt  to  establish  a  true  meta- 
physic  of  that  relation.  Agnosticism  of  the  ordinary  type 
depends  on  the  sheer  separation  of  what  is  given  together 
and  cannot  be  conceived  apart.  But  the  Absolute,  if  we 
are  to  use  the  modern  term,  is  not  unknown.  According 
to  a  fine  phrase  of  Professor  Laurie's  which  I  quoted,  '  its 
predicates  are  the  worlds  ' ;  we  read  its  nature  in  the  sys- 
tem of  its  appearances.  God  as  immanent — the  divine  as 
revealed  in  the  structure  and  system  of  finite  experience — 
this  may  be  said  to  have  been  the  text  of  last  year's 
discourse  and  the  outcome  of  my  argument.  And  in  the 
philosophical  interpretation  of  phenomena  everything  de- 
pends, I  argued,  on  keeping  the  whole  range  of  experience 
in  view.  Naturalism  and  kindred  theories  result,  as  we 
saw,  from  prematurely  closing  the  record,  instead  of  follow- 
ing out  the  evolutionary  scheme  to  its  obvious  culmination 
in  mind — mind  that  knows  and  appreciates,  and  thus 
rounds  and  completes  what  were  otherwise  a  broken 
arch.  There  is  no  system,  no  whole  of  being,  no  real  fact 
at  all,  till  the  external  gathers  itself  up,  as  it  were,  into 
internality,  and  existence  sums  itself  in  the  conscious 
soul. 

The  view  thus  indicated  commits  us,  it  was  urged  in 
the  two  concluding  lectures,1  neither  to  a  monadistic  con- 
struction of  the  universe  nor  to  any  form  of  subjective 
idealism  or  mentalism.  But  it  enshrines  the  conviction 
which  Mr.  Bradley  expressed,  in  replying  to  certain  of  his 
critics,  that  'that  which  is  highest  to  us  is  also  in  and  to 
the  universe  most  real,  and  there  can  be  no  question  of  its 

1  These  are  to  be  considered  as,  in  some  respects,  an  appendix  to  the 
general  argument  contained  in  the  first  eight  lectures. 


216  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

reality  being  somehow  upset  V  Some  such  view  of  the 
systematic  character  of  reality  is  taught  in  every  constructive 
philosophy;  and,  short  of  such  a  conviction,  we  cannot  be 
said,  I  think,  to  have  either  a  philosophy  or  a  religion  in 
the  ordinary  sense. 

'  God  as  immanent,'  it  has  just  been  said,  might  be  de- 
scribed as  the  text  of  our  last  year's  discourse.  In  the 
more  abstract  language  of  recent  philosophical  discussion, 
our  conclusion  might  also  be  expressed  as  '  the  reality,  pf_ 
appearances  '.  Mr.  Bradley,  in  the  title  of  his  great  book, 
and  in  his  wholesale  condemnation  of  the  successive  phases 
of  our  experience  as  '  mere  appearances  ',  or  as  '  illusory  ', 
'  self  -contradictory  '  and  'unreal',  has  laid  himself  open 
to  the  charge  of  reviving  in  a  subtler  form  the  old  agnostic 
contrast  between  reality  and  its  appearances.  But  such 
is  not,  as  I  understand  him,  Mr.  Bradley's  real  intention 
or  his  deepest  thought.  He  reminds  us,  at  all  events, 
emphatically  that  '  appearances  exist,  and  whatever  exists 
must  belong  to  reality  ' ;  consequently  whatever  conclu- 
sion we  may  ultimately  reach  as  to  the  nature  of  reality, 
we  may  at  least  '  be  certain  that  it  cannot  be  less  than 
appearances  '.2  The  universe,  in  short,  or  its  informing 
principle,  is  '  good  for '  as  much  as  our  experience  actually 
shows  it  to  contain.  So  expressed,  this  may  appear  a  trivial 
result,  and,  as  we  shall  immediately  see,  it  leaves  many 
questions  still  unanswered.  But  when  we  consider  the 
almost  incorrigible  tendency  of  human  thought  to  interpret 
the  relation  of  appearance  and  reality  as  one  of  opposition 
or  negation,  it  is  very  far  from  being  as  unimportant  as  it 
looks.  In  its  original  and  legitimate  sense,  the  antithesis 
in  question  is  perfectly  intelligible,  and  is  constantly  veri- 
fied in  everyday  practice.  It  means  the  contrast  between 
the  first  view  of  a  thing  or  situation — the  first  imperfect 
and  probably  more  or  less  erroneous  impression — and  the 

1 Appearance  and  Reality  (second  edition),  p.  560.         *  Ibid.,  p.  132. 


xi     A  DISTINCTION  WITHIN  EXPERIENCE     217 

corrected  view  that  is  the  result  of  further  examination. 
The  contrast  is,  in  short,  between  the  thing  as  it  first 
appears,  and  the  thing  as  it  eventually  appears  in  the  light 
of  a  fuller  experience.  But  a  misguided  philosophy  trans- 
fers this  practical  distinction  between  false  and  true  within 
experience  to  the  relation  between  our  experience  as  a 
whole  and  a  reality,  which  it  is  usually,  and  rightly,  sup- 
posed to  reveal,  but  which  is  now  set  over  against  all  its 
appearances  as  something  inaccessible  and  unknowable. 
For  the  progressive  criticism  of  imperfect  conceptions 
inherent  in  the  advance  of  knowledge,  and  systematically 
carried  out  in  philosophical  reflection,  there  is  substituted, 
more  or  less  explicitly,  a  condemnation  of  knowledge  as 
such,  because  to  be  known  is  to  appear  to  the  knower. 
Hence  the  importance  of  the  contention  that  in  the  appear- 
ances we  already  grasp  the  nature  of  reality  and  that  we 
can  attain  to  it  in  no  other  way. 

This  was,  perhaps,  the  main  thought  in  Lord  Haldane's 
First  Series  of  Giffbrd  Lectures  at  St.  Andrews,  as  indi- 
cated in  their  title,  '  The  Pathway  to  Reality '.  That 
pathway  does  not  lie  through  and  behind  phenomena  to 
some  inscrutable  Beyond.  '  It  may  be  ',  he  says  at  the 
outset  of  his  quest,  '  that  it  is  just  in  the  world  that  is  here 
and  now,  when  fully  comprehended  and  thought  out,  that 
we  shall  find  God,  and  in  finding  God  shall  find  the  Reality 
of  that  world  in  Him.'  And  repeatedly  he  uses,  to  enforce 
his  meaning,  the  emphatic  and,  at  first  blush,  almost  para- 
doxical phrase,  '  the  world  as  it  seems  '.  'If  the  stand- 
point of  these  lectures  be  a  true  one,'  he  says  towards  the 
close  of  his  first  volume,1  '  we  are  free  to  believe  in  the 
world  as  it  seems,  and  not  driven  to  sacrifice  any  aspect  of 
it.  If  the  supposed  facts  of  observation  which  we  indicate 
by  our  names — life  and  development — are,  what  all  plain 
people  assume  them  to  be,  real  facts,  why  should  we  strain 
1  The  Pathway  to  Reality,  p.  254. 


218  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

every  faculty  to  explain  human  beings  away  into  automata, 
or  quiver  with  excitement  when  some  one  writes  that  he 
has  found  that  protoplasm  may  apparently  be  reduced  to 
a  condition  of  chemical  inertness.  .  .  .  .If  a  thousand  such, 
results  were  really  established,  we  should  yet  be  as  far  as 
ever  from  exhibiting  life  as  a  mechanical  arrangement  of 
molecules.'  '  We  ought ',  he  says  again,  '  to  be  prepared  to 
believe  in  the  different  aspects  of  the  world  as  it  seems— 
life,  for  example,  as  much  as  mechanism,  morality  as  much 
as  life,  religion  aVmuch  as  morality— for  these  belong  to 
different  aspects  of  the  world  as  it  seems,  aspects  which 
emerge  at  different  standpoints,  and  are  the  results  of 
different  purposes  and  different  categories  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  knowledge.  And  if  Philosophy  gives  us  back  what 
Science  threatened  to  take  away,  and  restores  to  plain 
people  their  faith  in  the  reality  of  each  of  these  phases  of 
the  world  as  it  seems,  then  Philosophy  will  have  gone  a 
long  way  to  justify  its  existence.' l  Hegel's  metaphysic*" 
of  essence  and  appearance  has  always  seemed  to  me,  in 
its  massive  realism,  one  of  the  fundamental  insights  of  the 
philosophy  from  which  Lord  Haldane  draws.  Hegel  is 
the  last  man  to  bid  us  rest  content  with  first  views  of 
things;  rather,  philosophy  is  to  him,  in  its  essence,  the 
systematic  criticism  of  knowledge.  But,  in  his  view., the 
process  of  experience  is,  from  the  beginning,  the  growing 
knowledge  of  a  self -manifesting  reality.  And  the  most 
important  consequence  of  thus  emphasizing  the  essential 
truthfulness  of  the  process  of  self-communication  is  just 
that  it  forbids  any  arbitrary  limitation  of  truth  to  particu- 
lar phases  or  departments  of  experience — forbids  us,  for 
example,  to  treat  the  practical  world  of  sense-perception 
as  literally  and  finally  real,  and  the  expressions  of  the 
religious  consciousness  as  the  illusory  product  of  selfish 
hopes  and  fears.  Our  experience  is  nowhere  infected  by 
1  The  Pathway  to  Reality,  p.  119. 


xi  THE  LOWER  PANTHEISM  219 

radical  falsehood.  Criticism  of  detail  and  reflective  inter- 
pretation of  the  whole  are  necessary  in  all  departments; 
but  in  their  main  affirmations  the  ethical,  the  aesthetic  and 
the  religious  consciousness  have  at  least  the  same  prima 
facie  claim  upon  our  belief  as  any  other  side  of  our  experi- 
ence. And  that  general  claim  once  admitted,  it  may  well 
be  that,  on  a  critical  review  of  experience  as  a  whole, 
these  phases  of  it  may  prove  to  be  of  more  decisive  im- 
portance than  any  others  for  our  final  conception  of  the 
world. 

For  it  is  clear,  as  I  have  emphasized  from  the  first,  that 
in  the  philosophical  interpretation  of  phenomena  everything  * 
depends  on  the  idea  of  system  and  the  scale  of  values  which 
is  associated  with  it.  If  every  phenomenon  is,  so  to  say, 
as  good  as  another,  there  can  be  no  talk  of  a  principle 
of  the  whole  and  no  sense  in  seeking  to  determine  its 
nature.  If  every  event,  every  feature  of  the  world,  in  its 
isolation  as  a  particular  fact  just  as  it  occurs,  is  referred 
directly  to  the  operation  of  the  supreme  principle,  that 
principle  becomes  simply  the  pell-mell  of  empirical  occur- 
rence over  again.  The  doctrine  of  immanence  becomes  on 
these  terms  a  perfectly  empty  affirmation;  for  the  operative 
principle  supposed  to  be  revealed  is  simply  the  character- 
less unity  of  '  Being ',  in  which  the  sum-total  of  phenomena 
is  indiscriminately  housed.  The  unity  reached  is  the  unity 
of  a  mere  collection,  and  everything  remains  just  as  it  was 
before.  Such  a  pantheism  is  indistinguishable  from  the 
barest  Naturalism.  'All  in  All,'  said  Fichte  in  another 
reference,  'and  for  that  very  reason  nothing  at  all.'  This 
lower  pantheism,  as  it  may  be  called,  is  common  in  the 
popular  cults  of  the  East,  where  the  immanental  unity  of 
the  divine  is  little  more  than  the  idea  of  a  teeming  nature, 
and  passes  easily  into  a  gross  polytheism,  whose  deities  rep- 
resent and  consecrate  every  natural  force  and  tendency. 
In  pantheistic  thought  on  a  higher  intellectual  level,  one 


220  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  LECT. 

often  meets  the  same  tendency  to  press  the  idea  of  the 
immanence  of  the  divine  in  all  phenomena  equally,  and 
thereby  to  use  the  Absolute  as  an  instrument  for  the  oblitera- 
tion of  all  distinctions  of  rank  and  value.  Notable  examples 
are  to  be  found  in  the  epigrammatic  but  shallow  philosophy 
of  Pope's  Essay  on  Man : 

All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  Nature  is,  and  God  the  soul ; 
That  changed  thro'  all,  and  yet  in  all  the  same,  .  .  . 
Lives  thro'  all  life,  extends  thro'  all  extent, 
Spreads  undivided,  operates  unspent ; 
Breathes  in  our  soul,  informs  our  mortal  part, 
As  full,  as  perfect,  in  a  hair  as  heart : 
As  full,  as  perfect,  in  vile  man  that  mourns, 
As  the  rapt  Seraph  that  adores  and  burns : 
To  Him  no  high,  no  low,  no  great,  no  small ; 
He  fills,  he  bounds,  connects,  and  equals  all. 

(1.267-80.) 

Sometimes  (as  to  some  extent  in  the  lines  quoted)  this 
levelling  down  of  finite  distinctions  appears  as  the  counter- 
part of  an  insistence  on  the  incomparable  and  unapproach- 
able greatness  of  the  divine.  The  tendency  of  mystical 
thought  to  exalt  the  divine  above  all  predicates,  making 
it  literally  the  unnameable,  the  ineffable,  the  unknowable, 
leads  in  a  similar  direction ;  for  that  which  is  characterless 
cannot  be  said  to  reveal  itself  more  intimately  in  one  aspect 
of  experience  than  another;  and  so,  as  Bradley  says, 
this  empty  transcendence  and  this  shallow  pantheism  are 
seen  to  be  opposite  sides  of  the  same  mistake.1  JBiit-tbe 
1  principle  of  unity  '  which  philosophers  seek  is  not  the 
unity  of  a  mere  collection  or  of  a  bare  abstraction.  It 
is  unity  of  system  that  is  clearly  intended;  and  the  idea 
of  a  systematic  whole  essentially  involves  discrimination, 
perspective,  something  like  a  hierarchy  of  means  and 
end.  The  true  revelation  of  the  divine  must  be  sought, 
1  Cf.  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  551. 


xi  SPINOZA  AND  HIS  CRITICS  221 

therefore,  as  I  have  contended,  in  the  systematic  structure 
of  finite  experience  as  a  whole. 

Spinoza's  system  is,  from  one  point  of  view,  an  example 
of  the  logic  which,  in  its  attempt  to  characterize  the 
Absolute,  .abstracts  from  all  finite  determinations,  and  is 
left,  accordingly,  with  the  definition  of  God  as  mere  Sub- 
stance or  Being.  Moreover,  his  insistence  on  the  universal 
and  thorough-going  immanence  of  the  divine  causation 
exposed  him  to  the  accusation  of  abolishing  the  distinction 
between  good  and  evil,  and,  indeed,  of  reducing  all  distinc- 
tions to  one  dead  level  of  indifference.  In  the  famous 
appendix  to  the  First  Book  of  the  Ethics,  he  includes  good 
and  evil,  right  and  wrong,  praise  and  blame,  as  well  as 
beauty  and  ugliness,  order  and  disorder,  among  human 
'  prejudices  ',  abstractions  of  the  imagination,  due  to  man's 
incorrigible  habit  of  judging  every  fact  according  to  its 
beneficial  or  harmful  effects  upon  himself.  '  The  perfection 
of  things  is  to  be  reckoned  only  from  their  own  nature 
and  capacity  ' ;  and  so  regarded  everything  in  its  own  place 
as  it  exists  is  equally  perfect  and  equally  necessary,  seeing 
that  all  things  follow  from  the  necessity  of  the  divine  nature. 
It  was  sentences  such  as  these,  in  entire  harmony  as  they 
seemed  with  the  whole  tenor  of  his  system,  which  drew 
upon  him  from  one  of  his  correspondents  the  charge  of 
'  removing  all  the  sanctions  of  virtue  and  reducing  us  to 
automata ',  of  degrading  human  beings  to  the  level  of  the 
brutes  or  even  of  plants  and  stones.  Spinoza's  patient 
letters  in  reply  are  important  because,  whether  they  com- 
pletely turn  the  point  of  the  criticism  or  not,  they  are  clear 
proof  that  Spinoza  did  not  intend  his  doctrine  of  God  to 
override  the  specific  differences  between  the  parts  of  nature 
or  what  he  would  have  called  the  '  essences  '  or  '  natures  ' 
of  things.  Although  God  is  the  immanent  cause  of  all 
things — that  is  an  ontological  tie  which  it  is  impossible  to 
sever — still  the  divine  nature  is  not  equally  manifested  in 


222  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES          LECT. 

everything:  there  are  degrees  of  perfection  or  reality.  As 
he  quaintly  puts  it :  '  A  mouse  no  less  than  an  angel  is 
dependent  on  God,  yet  a  mouse  is  not  a  kind  of  angel.'  So 
again :  '  The  wicked,  it  is  true,  do  in  their  fashion  the  will 
of  God,  but  they  are  not,  on  that  account,  in  any  way 
comparable  to  the  good.  The  more  perfection  a  thing  has, 
the  more  does  it  participate  in  deity,  and  the  more  does  it 
express  God's  perfection.  Since,  then,  the  good  have  incom- 
parably more  perfection  than  the  bad,  their  virtue  cannot  be 
likened  to  the  virtue  of  the  wicked,  inasmuch  as  the  wicked 
lack  the  love  of  God,  which  proceeds  from  the  knowledge 
of  God,  and  by  reason  of  which  alone  we  are,  according  to 
our  human  understanding,  called  the  servants  of  God.  The 
wicked,  knowing  not  God,  are  but  as  instruments  in  the 
hands  of  a  workman,  serving  unconsciously,  and  perishing 
in  the  using ;  the  good,  on  the  other  hand,  serve  consciously, 
and  in  serving  become  more  perfect '  (Ep.  32).  Finally,  he 
says,  we  can  understand  best  the  nature  of  God's  relation  to 
the  universe  '  by  considering,  not  stocks  and  plants,  but  the 
most  reasonable  and  perfect  creatures  '  (Ep.  34). 

Here,  then,  in  Spinoza,  where  a  priori  we  might  perhaps 
have  least  expected  it,  we  get  the  doctrine  of  '  degrees  of 
truth  or  reality',  the  emphatic  assertion  of  which  made 
Mr.  Bradley's  Appearance  and  Reality  such  an  important 
contribution  to  contemporary  thought.  Spinoza's  reply  to 
his  critics  is,  in  effect,  the  acknowledgement  of  an  objective 
scale  of  values,  which  reinstates  the  distinctions  which  he 
had  apparently  denied;  and,  inconsistent  as  it  may  seem 
with  his  thorough-going  determinism,  the  concluding  book 
of  the  Ethics  sets  before  us  the  true  or  ideal  life  of  man 
as  a  gospel  of  liberation.  I  have  already  referred  to  the 
negative  argument  with  which  this  doctrine  of  Degrees  is 
linked  in  Mr.  Bradley's  exposition,  and  we  shall  have 
occasion  to  return  at  a  later  stage  to  criticize  certain  of 
its  implications.  But  however  Mr.  Bradley  reconciles  to 


xi        AN  OBJECTIVE  SCALE  OF  VALUES        223 

himself  apparently  conflicting  positions,  it  is  sufficiently 
plain  from  his  concluding  paragraphs  that,  in  his  own  view, 
the  vital  contention  of  his  book  is  the  positive  doctrine 
that  reality  is  revealed  in  the  system  of  its  appearances, 
and  that.the  standards  of  better  and  higher  which  we  apply 
are  themselves  based  on  the  nature  of  reality  and  dictated 
by  it.1  With  this  conclusion  we  may  intimate  our  agree- 
ment in  advance,  but  the  nature  of  our  criterion  of  value 
and  the  justification  of  the  objective  character  we  attribute 
to  it  are  points  that  still  call  for  further  discussion.  This 
will  form  the  subject  of  the  next  lecture.  One  thing,  how- 
ever, is  already  plain  from  all  that  has  gone  before.  The 
standard  or  principle  of  value  must  be  found  in  the  nature 
of  the  system  as  a  whole.  Judgements  of  value,  in  other 
words,  are  not  to  be  taken,  like  the  intuitions  of  an  older 
philosophy,  as  so  many  detached  and  mutually  independent 
pronouncements  of  one  faculty  or  another  upon  particular 
features  or  aspects  of  the  world.  They  represent  rather 
so  many  parts  of  one  fundamental  judgement  in  which 
the  nature  of  reality,  as  exhibited  in  the  system,  may  be 
said  to  affirm  itself..  Every  particular  judgement  depends 
for  its  ultimate  sanction  on  the  recognition  of  its  object 
as  a  contributory  element  to  this  inclusive  whole. 

If  I  might  venture  to  illustrate  my  meaning  by  turning 
from  nature  to  art,  I  would  point  to  the  outlook  on  the  world 
which  we  get  in  the  greatest  poetry.  Let  us  take  the  case 
of  Shakespeare,  for  Shakespeare  has  been  accused  by  a 
recent  writer  of  being  too  like  nature  and  giving  us  no  world- 
view — no  philosophy — of  his  own.  Shakespeare,  says  this 
writer,  '  is  all  the  world  over  again.  Here  is  human  life  no 
doubt,  and  a  brilliant  pageantry  it  is,  but  human  life  as 
varied  and  as  problematic  as  it  is  in  the  living.  There  is 

1  '  The  positive  relation  of  every  appearance  as  an  adjective  to  Reality, 
and  the  presence  of  Reality  among  its  appearances  in  different  degrees 
^and  with  diverse  values — this  double  truth  we  have  found  to  be  the 
'"centre  of  philosophy'  (p.  551). 


224  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEGREES  xi 

no  Shakespearian  point  of  view.  He  possessed  no  unitary 
conception  of  the  meaning  and  larger  relations  of  human 
life.' '  That  is  true,  so  far  as  it  emphasizes  the  richness  and 
many-sidedness  of  Shakespeare's  nature  and  the  dramatic 
character  of  his  genius,  which  enables  him  to  realize  and  to 
express  sympathetically  very  various  attitudes  towards  life 
and  the  ultimate  problems.  It  is  true  also  if  it  means  that 
Shakespeare  had  no  cut-and-dry  theory  of  the  universe.  He 
was  no  precise  and  self-satisfied  expounder  of  the  ways  of 
God  to  man :  the  complexity  and  the  mystery  of  existence 
are  the  themes  of  his  deepest  utterances. 

Men  must  endure 

Their  going  hence,  e'en  as  their  coming  hither ; 
Ripeness  is  all. 

But  on  the  fundamental  verities  his  touch  is  sure.  Shake- 
speare gives  us  the  heart-shaking  tragedies  of  Lear  and 
Othello,  full  of  baseness  and  wickedness  and  folly  and  the 
cruelty  of  things,  but  he  gives  us  Cordelia  and  Desdemona 
as  their  centre.  And,  as  in  the  old  story  of  the  three  men 
who  were  cast  into  the  fiery  furnace,  '  the  fire  had  no  power 
upon  their  bodies,  and  the  smell  of  fire  had  not  passed  on 
them,'  so  in  the  case  of  Cordelia  and  Desdemona  we  feel— 
the  poet  makes  us  feel — that  evil  and  death  have  no  power 
over  their  radiant  and  triumphant  goodness.  _The  last  word 
is  with  Truth  and  Love.  That  is  Shakespeare's  criticism  of 
life.  It  is  also  a  theory  of  things.  And  as  in  the  world  of 
Shakespeare's  tragedies,  so  in  the  greater  world,  which  they 
reflect  as  Shakespeare  saw  it,  we  have  to  take  the  fabric  of 
the  world  as  a  whole,  before  we  recognize  the  foundations  on 
which  it  stands. 

1  R.  B.  Perry,  Approach  to  Philosophy,  pp.  32-4. 


LECTURE  XII 

THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE:  ITS  NATURE  AND 
JUSTIFICATION 

WE  accepted  at  the  close  of  the  last  lecture  the  principle 
that  the  nature  of  reality  can  only  mean  the  systematic  struc- 
ture discernible  in  its  appearances,  and  that  this  must  furnish 
us  with  our  ultimate  criterion  of  value.  We  have  accepted, 
therefore,  in  a  sense  in  which  it  seemed  to  us  intelligible 
and  true,  the  criterion  on  which  '  absolutist '  writers  like 
Mr.  Bradley  and  Professor  Bosanquet  lay  so  much  stress. 
But  much  controversy  has  raged  round  the  particular  form 
in  which  they  express  the  position.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
revolt  against  Mr.  Bradley's  Absolutism  was  one  main  cause 
of  the  Pragmatist  movement  which  has  since  assumed  such 
wide  dimensions.  The  accusation  originally  brought  against 
Mr.  Bradley  by  the  Personal  Idealists,  who  were  the  fore- 
runners, and  in  some  cases  the  pioneers,  of  Pragmatism,  was 
based,  in  their  own  words,  upon  his  '  way  of  criticizing 
human  experience  not  from  the  standpoint  of  human  experi- 
ence, but  from  the  visionary  and  impracticable  standpoint  of 
an  absolute  experience  V  or,  in  Mr.  Schiller's  more  drastic 
phraseology,  '  his  inhuman,  incompetent  and  impracticable 
intellectualism  '.2  The  reference  is  more  particularly  to  the 
way  in  which  Mr.  Bradley,  in  Appearance  and  Reality,  uses 
his  criterion  to  '  condemn  ',  as  he  says,  the  world  of  appear- 
ances en  bloc.  This  naturally  provokes  the  question  or 
retort — What  knowledge  have  we  of  this  Absolute,  in  whose 
name  condemnation  is  so  magisterially  passed  upon  the 
world  of  our  actual  experience?  And  I  think  it  must  be 

1  Personal  Idealism,  Preface,  p.  viii.  *  Ibid.,  p.  127. 


226  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

admitted  that  Mr.  Bradley 's  mode  of  procedure  is  unfor- 
tunate. He  says  repeatedly  that  a  complete  philosophy 
would  be  '  a  systematic  account  of  all  the  regions  of  appear- 
ance ',  in  which  '  the  whole  world  of  appearance  would  be 
set  out  as  a  progress,  a  development  of  principle  though  not 
in  time,  and  every  sphere  of  experience  would  be  measured 
by  the  absolute  standard  and  given  a  rank  answering  to  its 
own  relative  merits  and  defects  V  His  own  doctrine  of 
degrees  of  truth  and  reality  is  his  positive  contribution  to 
such  a  philosophy,  and  it  contains,  I  think,  most  of  what  is 
valuable  and  likely  to  be  permanent  in  the  volume.  But 
the  positive  doctrine  is  almost  swamped  for  the  reader  by 
the  copious  negative  polemic  in  which  Mr.  Bradley  labours 
to  expose  the  self-contradictory  nature  of  the  phenomenal 
world  from  top  to  bottom.  If  we  are  to  avoid  misconcep- 
tion, therefore,  it  will  be  necessary  to  examine  with  some 
care  the  way  in  which  the  criterion  is  formulated  by  the  two 
authors  referred  to.  In  that  way  we  shall  best  define  our 
own  position. 

Mr.  Bradley's  statement  of  his  criterion  is  familiar  to  us 
all.  '  It  is  clear  ',  he  says,  '  that  in  rejecting  the  inconsistent 
as  appearance,  we  are  applying  a  positive  knowledge  of 
the  ultimate  nature  of -things.  Ultimate  reality  is  such  that 
it  does  not  contradict  itself;  here  is  an  absolute  criterion.' 
But  to  deny  inconsistency  is  to  assert  consistency;  and 
seeing  that  appearances,  however  contradictory  they  may 
be,  still  exist,  and  must  therefore  in  some  sense  '  belong 
to  reality  ',  '  we  may  make  a  further  advance — we  may  say 
that  everything  which  appears  is  somehow  real  in  such  a 
way  as  to  be  self-consistent.  The  character  of  the  real  is  to 
possess  everything  phenomenal  in  a  harmonious  form.'  And 
to  achieve  such  an  '  inclusive  harmony  ',  '  the  Reality  must 
be  a  single  whole  ',  '  beyond  which  there  is  nothing '.  In 
other  words,  '  the  Absolute  is  an  individual  and  a  system  \z 

1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  455.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  136-44. 


xii  MR.  BRADLEY'S  FORMULA  227 

Returning  to  the  subject  in  a  later  chapter,1  he  defines  per- 
fection of  truth  and  of  reality  as  consisting  in  '  positive 
self-subsisting  individuality ',  and  recalls  the  two  ways  in 
which  individuality  appears.  '.Imth  must  exhibit  the  mark 
of  internal  harmony  or  again  the  mark  of  expansion  and 
all-inclusiveness.  And  these  two  characteristics  are  diverse 

*•»•.»; 

aspects  of  a  single  principle.'  Wherever  we  apply  it,  he 
'says,  '  the  standard  still  is  the  same.  And  it  is  applied 
always  under  the  double  form  of  inclusiveness  and  harmony.' 
And  again  in  the  concluding  pages  of  the  volume  we  read, 
'  our  criterion  is  individuality  or  the  idea  of  complete  system.' z 
Professor  Bosanquet  has  emphasized  his  acceptance  of  the 
same  formula  by  making  it  the  title  of  his  first  course  of 
Gifford  Lectures  :  '  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value.' 
'  I  chose  Individuality  ',  he  says  'in  his  Preface,  *  as  the  clue 
to  my  subject,  because  it  seemed  to  be  the  principle  which 
must  ultimately  determine  the  nature  of  the  real  and  its  con- 
stituents, of  what  is  complete  and  self-contained,  and  of 
what  approximates  or  belongs  to  such  a  reality.'  '  Ijhe 
.supreme  principle  of  value  and  reality '  is  '  wholeness,  com- 
pleteness, individuality  ',  and  '  the  appeal  to  the  whole  is  the 
same  thing  with  the  principle  otherwise  known  as  the  prin- 
^ciple  of  non-contradiction.  .  .  .  .Every  true  proposition  is 
rso,  in  the  last  resort,  because  its  contradictory  is  not  conceiv- 
able in  harmony  with  the  whole  of  experience.'  Again,  '  It 
is  all  one  whether  we  make  non-contradiction,  wholeness  or 
individuality  our  criterion  of  the  ultimately  real.'  '  The 
Individual  is  complete  and  coherent,  and  in  the  ultimate 
sense  there  can  be  only  one  Individual.'  And  once  more, 
almost  is  Mr.  Bradley's  words, '  The  standard  ['  the  supreme 
standard  of  value  '],is  positive  non-contradiction,  developed 
through  comprehensiveness  and  consistency.'  & 

1  Chap,  xxiv,  '  Degrees  of  Truth  and  Reality/  pp.  363,  371. 

*  P-  542. 

*  Cf.  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  vi,  xxv,  44,  51,  68,  72,  299. 


228  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

'  Our  result  so  far  is  this,'  says  Mr.  Bradley :  '  The  uni- 
verse is  one  in  this  sense  that  its  differences  co-exist  har- 
moniously within  one  whole,  beyond  which  there  is  nothing. 
Hence  the  Absolute  is,  so  far,  an  individual  and  a  system; 
but  if  we  stop  here  [he  admits]  it  remains  but  formal 
and  abstract.' '  '  Can  we  then  ',  he  adds,  '  say  anything 
about  the  concrete  nature  of  the  system?'  Mr.  Bradley's 
answer  is  to  identify  existence  with  '  experience  ',  or,  more 
definitely,  '  sentient  experience  ',  '  what  is  commonly  called 
psychical  eixstence '.  This  he  does  in  language  closely 
resembling  Berkeley's.  If,  then,  we  read  our  former 
abstract  definition  in  terms  of  this  new  position,  '  our  con- 
clusion, so  far,  will  be  this,  that  the  Absolute  is  one  system, 
and  that  its  contents  are  nothing  but  sentient  experience. 
It  will,  hence,  be  a  single  and  all-inclusive  experience,  which 
embraces  every  partial  diversity  in  concord.'  Finally,  Mr. 
Bradley  proceeds  to  ask  whether  we  really  have  a  positive 
idea  of  an  Absolute,  thus  defined  as  '  one  comprehensive 
sentience ; '  and  he  answers  that,  while  we  cannot  fully 
realize  its  existence,  its  main  features  are  drawn  from  our 
own  experience,  and  we  have  also  a  suggestion  there  of  the 
unity  of  a  whole  embracing  distinctions  within  itself.  This 
we  have  in  '  mere  feeling  or  immediate  presentation  ',  where 
we  experience  as  an  undifferentiated  whole  that  which  we 
afterwards  proceed,  in  the  exercise  of  relational  thought,  to 
analyse  into  the  known  world  of  self  and  not-self,  with  all  its 
manifold  objects  and  distinctions.  Combining  this  primitive 
experience  of  felt  unity  with  the  later  experience  of  known 
diversity,  we  can  recognize  the  latter  as  a  transitional  stage, 
and  thus  reach  the  idea  of  a  higher  experience  in  which 
thought  shall,  as  it  were,  return  to  the  immediacy  of  feeling. 
'  We  can  form  the  general  idea  of  an  absolute  intuition  in 
which  phenomenal  distinctions  are  merged ;  a  whole  become 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  144  (the  opening  of  the  second  chapter  in 
Part  II). 


•xii  THE  ABSOLUTE  EXPERIENCE  229 

immediate  at  a  higher  stage  without  losing  any  richness.' 
4  The  relational  form  is  a  compromise  on  which  thought 
stands,  and  which  it  develops.  .  .  .  [But]  thought  can  form 
the  idea  of  an  apprehension,  something  like  feeling  in  direct- 
ness, which  contains  all  the  character  sought  by  its  relational 
efforts  ' ;  'ja.  total  experience  where  will  and  thrmght  ar>d 
feeling  may  all  once  more  be  one.'  ' 

We  shall  have  to  consider  the  conception  of  an  absolute 
experience  somewhat  closely  in  the  sequel.  But  what  it  is 
at  present  important  to  note  is  that  Mr.  Bradley  repeatedly 
confesses,  '  we  have  no  direct  knowledge  of  such  an  experi- 
ence ' ;  '  the  unity  after  all  is  unknown  '.2  And,  as  a  natural 
consequence,  we  are  equally  ignorant  of  how  '  the  bewilder- 
ing mass  of  phenomenal  diversity  '  is  harmonized,  and  its 
contradictions  reconciled  in  the  Absolute.  But  '  it  must 
somehow  be  at  unity  and  self-consistent  '.3  This  confessed 
ignorance  of  the  '  how  ',  combined  with  an  inextinguishable 
faith  as  to  the  '  somehow  ',  has  often  been  remarked  upon, 
so  constantly  are  the  two  repeated  in  Mr.  Bradley's  pages. 
'  .We  cannot  understand  how  in  the  Absolute  a  rich  harmony 
-embraces  every  special  discord,  but  on  the  other  hand  we 
may  be  sure  that  this  result  is  reached.'  '  We  have  no  basis 
on  which  to  doubt  that  all  content  comes  together  har- 
moniously in  the  Absolute.  .  .  .  All  this  detail  is  not  made 
one  in  any  way  which  we  can  verify.  That  it  is  all  recon- 
ciled we  know,  but  how,  in  particular,  is  hid  from  us.' 
'vCertainly,  in  the  end,  to  know  how  the  one  and  the  many 
are  united  is  beyond  our  power.  B.ut  in  the  Absolute  some- 
how, we  are  convinced,  the  problem  is  solved.' 4  In  contrast 
with  such  passages,  almost  pathetic  in  their  frequency,  we 
have  to  set  Mr.  Bradley's  emphatic,  almost  truculent,  assur- 
ance that,  '  with  regard  to  the  main  character  of  the  Abso- 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  160,  1 80, 181. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  468,  473.     It  is  '  not  an  experience  but  an  abstract  idea ' 
(p.  160). 

1  Ibid.,  p.  140.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  192,  239,  281. 


230  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

lute  ',  his  '  conclusion  is  certain  and  that  to  doubt  it  logically 
is  impossible  '-1  Or  again,  in  a  curious  formula  which  he 
is  fond  of  repeating : '  What  may  be,  if  it  also  must  be,  assur- 
edly is.' 2  In  other  words,  reality  must  be  a  single  and  har- 
monious whole,  but  for  aught  we  know  it  may  be  such  a 
whole,  therefore  it  is  such  a  whole.  Surely  it  is  obvious  that 
this  strange  attempt  at  demonstration  does  not  carry  us  a  step 
beyond  the  intellectual  postulate  of  our  initial  '  must ' : 
'  Reality  must  include  and  must  harmonize  every  possible 
fragment  of  experience.' 3  And  again  it  is  clear  that,  unless 

;we  have  at  least  some  knowledge  of  the  '  how  ',  the  knowl- 
edge claimed  in  these  passages  of  the  *  is  '  is  not  knowledge 
4  at  all,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  but  a  postulate  or,  if  you  like,  a 
belief,  an  inextinguishable  faith. 

And  I  would  add  that  the  criterion  of  inclusiveness  and 
harmony,  taken  by  itself,  remains  entirely  formal  and  ab- 
stract, if  not,  indeed,  tautologous.4  It  is  only  when  applied 
to  specific  experience  that  the  principle  of  non-contradiction 
or  of  internal  coherence  "becomes  more  than  an  empty 
formula,  and  as  soon  as  it  is  so  applied  it  receives  its  char- 
acter from  the  concrete  material  in  which  it  works  itself  out. 
The  principle  itself  gives  no  guidance  as  to  the  mode  in 
which  the  harmony  is  realized;  and  it  leaves  us  conse- 
quently at  the  mercy  of  analogies  which,  it  is  more  than 
probable,  may  be  quite  misleading.  Hence  it  is  an  inversion 
of  the  true  philosophic  method  to  try  to  define  the  Absolute 
on  the  basis  of  the  empty  principle,  and  from  that  definition 
to  reason  down  to  the  various  phases  of  our  actual  experi- 
ence, and  to  '  condemn  '  its  most  characteristic  features,  root 
and  branch,  as  *  irrational  appearance  '  and  '  illusion '.  The 

1  p.  518.  So  again  (p.  536),  '  Up  to  this  point  our  judgement  is  infal- 
lible, and  its  opposite  is  quite  impossible.' 

1  P-  199-  *  p.  548. 

*  As  I  have  suggested  elsewhere,  '  the  mere  consideration  that  the 
universe  exists — that  Being  is — proves  that  it  is  in  some  sense  a  har- 
mony. All  its  aspects  co-exist,  and  the  business  of  the  universe  goes  on  ' 
(Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos,  2nd  ed.,  p.  127). 


xii  FROM  THE  FINITE  TO  THE  ABSOLUTE  231 

only  possible  result  of  such  a  procedure  is  exemplified  in 
Mr.  Bradley's  actual  conclusion,  namely,  that  in  the  Abso- 
lute everything  is  somehow  reconciled,  but  inasmuch  as  we 
know  not  how,  none  of  the  predicates  drawn  even  from  our 
highest  experiences  are  applicable  in  this  ultimate  reference. 
'  The  Absolute  ',  he  says, '  is  not  personal,  nor  is  it  moral,  nor 
is  it  beautiful  or  true  ' J — a  cluster  of  negations  which, 
though  technically  true,  in  the  sense  intended,  are  practically 
more  false  than  would  have  been  the  corresponding  affirma- 
tions. It  was  the  strong  impression  which  Mr.  Bradley 
produced  of  following  this  barren  method  that  provoked 
(and  justified)  the  protest  above  referred  to,  against  his 
'jvay  of  criticizing  human  experience  from  the  visionary 
and  impracticable  standard  of  an  absolute  experience  '. 

Professor  Bosanquet,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  adopts  the 
same  criterion  and  formulates  it  in  almost  identical  terms, 
appears  to  me  to  realize  more  clearly  the  dangers  of  such 
a  procedure  and,  indeed,  its  inherent  impossibility.  His 
frequent  phrase,  '  the  empty  form  of  totality,'  is  itself  sig- 
nificant in  this  connexion;  and  in  general  he  follows,  as  if 
instinctively,  the  path  from  finite  experience  to  the  Absolute, 
tracing  the  organization  of  the  real  wholes  in  which,  in  the 
concrete  material  of  life,  the  empty  form  realizes  itself,  and 
seeking,  by  critical  use  of  the  data  thus  obtained,  to  reach 
some  positive  determination  of  the  nature  of  the  ultimate 
Whole.  It  is  surely  by  this  experimental  and  tentative 
method  alone  that  we  are  likely  to  reach  results  of  any 
value.  What  can  we  extract  from  the  principle  of  inclusive- 
ness  and  harmony  apart  from  our  experience  of  the  concrete 
worlds  of  morality,  of  beauty,  of  love,  or  of  the  passion  of 
the  intellectual  life?  The  specific  modes  in  which  the  con- 
sciousness of  value  is  realized  must  obviously  in  this  sense 
be  drawn  from  experience.  They  are  directly  apprehended ; 
we  taste  and  see  that  they  are  good.  And  only  through  such 
1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  537. 


232  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

experiences  can  we  give  any  concrete  content  to  the  idea  of 
a  perfect  or  absolute  Life.  Accordingly  it  is  upon  such 
experiences,  and  within  our  actual  experience  as  a  whole, 
that  the  metaphysical  criterion  works,  as  Professor  Bosan- 
quet  has  put  it  in  an  admirable  passage :  '  The  fundamental 
nature  of  the  inference  to  the  Absolute  ...  is  misappre- 
hended if  we  call  upon  it  to  put  us  in  possession  of  an 
ultimate  experience  which  is,  ex  hypothesi,  incompatible 
with  our  limited  being.  What  it  will  do  for  us  is  much  more 
relevant  to  the  transformation  of  our  lives.  It  exhibits  to 
us,  in  their  relative  stability  and  reciprocal  suggestions  of 
completeness,  the  provinces  of  experience  which  comprise  the 
various  values  of  life;  it  interprets  the  correlation  of  their 
worth  with  their  reality,  and  of  both  with  their  satisfactori- 
ness  to  the  soul.  .  .  .  .What  metaphysics  may  do,  and  in  the 
hands  of  the  masters  always  has  done,  is,  starting  from  any 
datum,  no  matter  what,  to  point  out  what  sort  of  thing  is  in 
actual  life  the  higher,  the  more  stable,  and  what  is  the  more 
defective  and  the  more  self-contradictory,  and  to  indicate 
the  general  law  or  tendency  by  which  the  latter  is  absorbed 
in  the  former.' 1  We  are  limited,  in  fact,  to  the  immanent 
criticism  of  more  or  less  in  our  actual  experience.  The  per- 
fect or  absolute  is  something  which  we  feel  after,  whose 
characters  we  divine  in  the  light  of  the  best  we  know,  taking, 
as  Professor  Bosanquet  says  elsewhere,2  'jthe  general  direc- 
tion of  our  higher  experiences  as  a  clue  to  the  direction  in 
which  perfection  has  to  be  sought '.  That  is  to  say,  in  sum, 
that  we  do  not  argue — and  it  would  be  a  futile  procedure 
if  we  did — from  the  bare  idea  of  a  systematic  whole,  but 
from  the  amount  of  system  and  the  kind  of  system  which  we 
are  able  to  point  to  as  realized  in  experience.  From  that  we 
argue  to  more  of  the  same  kind,  or  at  least  on  the  same  gen- 
eral lines,  although  it  may  be  on  an  ampler  and  diviner 
scale,  '  above  all  that  we  can  ask  or  think  '. 

1  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  268.  *  Ibid.,  p.  18. 


xii  THE  FORMULA  ENLARGED  233 

It  is  obvious,  moreover,  that  in  transferring  to  the  Abso- 
lute the  dominant  features  of  our  own  experience — in  treat- 
ing it  as  essentially  the  completion  or  perfected  expression 
of  these — we  are  assuming  much  more  than  is  warranted  by 
the  abstract,  and  at  best  purely  intellectualistic,  criterion  of 
non-contradiction  and  inclusiveness  with  which  we  started. 
And  if  we  return  to  Mr.  Bradley,  we  soon  find  him  using 
non-contradiction,  harmony  and  satisfaction  as  alternative 
terms,  and  disposed,  accordingly,  to  extract  from  his  logical 
principle  much  more  than  it  seems  capable,  in  its  natural 
meaning,  of  yielding.  His  Absolute  is  not  merely  an  intel- 
lectually coherent  whole ;  it  is  perfect  in  every  respect.  '  L 
admit,'  he  says  in  the  chapter  introductory  to  the  Second 
Book,  in  which  he  gives  a  preliminary  description  of  the 
characteristics  which  Reality  must  possess,  if  it  is  to  be 
accepted  as  the  solution  of  the  philosophical  problem,  '  or 
rather  I  would  assert,  that  a  result  if  it  fails  to  satisfy  our 

whole  nature  comes  short  of  perfection.     And  I  could  not 

* 

rest  tranquilly  in  a  truth,  if  I  were  compelled  to  regard  it 
as  hateful.  ...  If  metaphysics  is  to  stand,  it  must,  I  think, 
take  account  of  all  sides  of  our  being.  I  do  not  mean  that 
every  one  of  our  desires  must  be  met  by  a  promise  of  par- 
ticular satisfaction ;  for  that  would  be  absurd  and  utterly 
impossible.  But  if  the  main  tendencies  of  our  nature  do 
not  reach  satisfaction  in  the  Absolute,  we  cannot  believe 
that  we  have  attained  to  perfection  and  truth.' *  '  We  must 
believe ',  he  concludes,  '  that  reality  satisfies  our  whole 
being.  Our  main  wants — for  truth  and  life  and  for  beauty 
and  goodness — must  all  find  satisfaction.' z  The  conclu- 
sion is  reiterated  in  the  closing  pages  of  the  volume  in 
the  famous  passage :  '  We  make  mistakes,  but  still  we 
use  the  essential  nature  of  the  world  as  our  own  criterion 
of  value  and  reality.  Higher,  truer,  more  beautiful,  better 
and  more  real — these  on  the  whole  count  in  the  universe 
1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  146.  2  p.  158. 


234  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

as  they  count  for  us,  and  existence  must  correspond  with 
our  ideas.' 1 

So  far  as  I  can  recall,  the  enormous  extension  thus  given 
to  the  formal  principle  of  self -consistency  is  nowhere  ex- 
pressly justified,  except  in  a  piece  of  reasoning  which  has 
always  struck  me  as  one  of  the  weakest  in  the  book. 
'  There  is  no  direct  way  ',  he  says,  '  of  showing  that  reality 
is  perfect.  .  .  .  We  cannot  argue  directly  that  all  sides  of 
our  nature  must  be  satisfied,  but  indirectly  we  are  led  to 
the  same  result ' ;  for  '  is  it  certain  ',  he  asks,  '  that  the  mere 
intellect  can  be  self-satisfied  if  other  elements  of  our  nature 
remain  not  contented  ?  '  The  argument  is  made  to  turn 
almost  entirely  on  practical  discord  in  the  form  of  pain  or 
unsatisfied  desire.  The  very  '  idea  of  a  better  and  non- 
existing  condition  of  things  must  destroy  theoretical  rest ' ; 
and  as  *  we  are  forced  to  assume  theoretical  satisfaction, 
to  suppose  that  existing  one-sidedly  and  together  with  prac- 
tical discomfort  appears  inadmissible  '.  '  Pain,  of  course,  is 
a  fact,  and  no  fact  can  be  conjured  away  from  the  universe ; 
but  the  question  is  as  to  a  balance  of  pain ',  and  it  is  only 
necessary  to  *  assume  that  in  the  Absolute  there  is  a  balance 
of  pleasure,  and  all  is  consistent.'  Surely,  as  an  argument 
to  prove  the  perfection  of  the  universe,  this  transition  from 
logical  coherence  or  incoherence  to  psychical  comfort  or 
discomfort  is  one  of  the  flimsiest  bridges  ever  built  by  meta- 
physical subtlety,  and  I  can  hardly  avoid  the  feeling  of 
something  half-hearted  in  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Bradley 
puts  it  forward.  He  deals  more  worthily  with  the  essentials 
of  the  question  in  a  recent  article  in  Mind,z  one  of  the  many 
to  which  criticism  has  compelled  him  during  the  last  ten  or 
twelve  years.  '  It  is  after  all ',  he  says  at  the  close  of  the 
article,  '  an  enormous  assumption  that  what  satisfies  us  is 

1  p-  550.  "  PP.  155-8- 

*  On  '  Coherence  and  Contradiction '  in  Mind,  October  1909,  New 
Series,  vol.  xviii,  p.  507  (reprinted  in  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality, 
P-  243). 


xii  THE  ASSUMPTION  INVOLVED  235 

real,  and  that  the  reality  has  got  to  satisfy  us.  It  is  an 
assumption  tolerable,  I  think,  only  when  we  hold  that  the 
Universe  is  substantially  one  with  each  of  us,  and  actually 
as  a  whole,  feels  and  wills  and  knows  itself  within  us.  ... 
And  our  confidence  rests  on  the  hope  and  the  faith  that, 
except  as  an  expression,  an  actualization,  of  the  one  Real, 
our  personality  has  not  counted,  and  has  not  gone  here  to 
distort  and  vitiate  the  conclusion.  .  .  .  And,  wherever  this 
is  felt,  there  is  little  desire  to  insist  that  what  we  want  must 
be  real  exactly  so  as  we  want  it.  Whatever  detail  is  neces- 
sary to  the  Good  we  may  assume  must  be  included  in  reality, 
but  it  may  be  included  there  in  a  way  which  is  beyond  our 
knowledge  and  in  a  consummation  too  great  for  our  under- 
standing. On  the  other  side,  apart  from  the  belief  that  the 
ultimate  and  absolute  Real  is  actually  present  and  working 
within  us,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  claim  that  reality  is  in 
the  end  that  which  satisfies  one  or  more  of  us?  It  seems  a 
lunatic  dream.  .  .  .  The  ideas  and  wishes  of  "  fellows  such 
as  I  crawling  between  heaven  and  earth,"  how  much  do  they 
count  in  the  march  or  the  drift  of  the  Universe? ' 

It  may  easily  be  objected  that  there  is  something  circular 
in  the  reasoning  here.  The  validity  of  our  assertions  about 
the  universe  is  to  depend  upon  the  view  we  hold  of  man's 
place  in  the  universe  or  his  .relations  to  the  Real ;  but  that 
is  the  fundamental  affirmation  in  the  case,  and  how  are  we 
to  be  assured  of  its  validity?  To  this  it  may  be  answered 
that  the  view  here  indicated  of  man's  relation  to  the  Real 
has  behind  it  the  whole  weight  of  a  philosophical  system.  It 
is  the,  same  view  so  strongly  urged  in  last  year's  lectures,  that 
man,  as  I  expressed  it,  is  organic  to  the  world,  and  conversely 
the  world  is  organic  to  man,  completing  itself  in  him,  and 
manifestly  coming  to  life  and  expression  in  his  experience. 
Neither,  if  we  consider  rightly,  can  be  so  much  as  conceived 
apart  from  the  other.  For  by  man  is  meant,  of  course,  not 
merely,  or  even  specifically,  the  historical  denizens  of  this 


236  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

planet,  but  sentient  life  flowering  in  the  rational  mind,  in 
whatever  '  where  '  or  '  when  '  it  comes  to  birth.  And  yet, 
if  the  critic  were  to  press  his  objection,  J^wpuld  admit  that 
there  is  an  assumption  involved  in  this  philosophical  theory, 
an  assumption  woven  into  its  very  texture,  and  without 
which,  perhaps,  the  theory  would  never  have  been  arrived 
at — I  mean  the  conviction  of  the  essential  greatness  of  man 
and  the  infinite  nature  of  the  values  revealed  in  his  life. 
Without  this  absolute  judgement  of  value,  how  could  we 
argue,  how  could  we  convince  ourselves  that,  in  our  estf- 
mates,  it  is  not  we  who  judge  as  finite  particulars,  but  Reality 
affirming,  through  us,  its  inmost  nature?  It  is  not  on  the 
mere  fact  of  consciousness  or  self -consciousness  that  we  take 
our  stand,  but  on  the  nature  of  the  content  experience,  the 
inexhaustible  wonder  and  greatness  of  the  worlds  which 
it  opens  up  to  us.  Every  form  of  philosophical  idealism 
appears  to  involve  this  conviction  of  the  profound  signifi- 
cance of  human  life,  as  capable  of  appropriating  and  realiz- 
ing these  values.  And  without  such  a  conviction,  argument 
about  God  or  the 'universe  would  seem  to  be  mere  waste  of 
time;  for  the  man  to  whom  his  own  life  is  a  triviality  is  not 
likely  to  find  a  meaning  in  anything  else. 

When  we  approach  the  question  seriously,  therefore,  and 
not  in  a  spirit  of  dialectical  display,  we  find  ourselves, 
I  think,  dismissing  without  more  ado  the  insinuations  of 
naturalistic  evolution  that  our  human  values  are  no  more 
than  the  forms  taken  by  the  instinctive  self-affirmation  of 
a  particular  animal  species,  and,  consequently,  quite  irrele- 
vant in  any  discussion  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  reality. 
Glib  theories  of  this  description  always  remind  me  of  Plato's 
account  of  those  who  have  been  introduced  to  philosophy 
[too  young,  the  boys  who  have  tasted  dialectic  for  the  first 
time,  and  who  delight,  like  puppies,  in  pulling  and  tearing 
to  pieces  with  logic  any  one  who  comes  near  them.1 

1  Republic,  539. 


xii    THE  ESSENTIAL  GREATNESS  OF  MAN    237 

continue  in  Plato's  words)  we  are  '  resolved  to  discuss  and 
examine  truth,  rather  than  to  play  at  contradiction  for 
amusement,'  we  see  at  once  that,  however  gradual  the  tran- 
sition from  one  stage  of  consciousness  to  another,  man's 
attainment  of  conceptual  thought  makes  him  an  organ  of 
the  universe  in  a  totally  different  sense  from  that  in  which 
any  mere  animal  can  be  said  to  be  so.  As  the  old  legend 
puts  it,  in  the  mouth  of  the  Creator  no  less  than  on  the  word 
of  the  serpent,  '  Man  is  become  as  one  of  us,  knowing  good 
and  evil.'  We  need  not,  as  Locke  said,  '  put  ourselves 
proudly  at  the  top  of  things,'  but,  with  thought,  we  are 
somehow  at  the  centre :  we  have  become  freemen  of  the 
universe.  '  Souls  in  general ',  said  Leibnitz  in  his  peculiar 
phraseology,  '  are  living  mirrors  or  images  of  the  universe 
of  created  things,  but  spirits  are  also  images  of  the  divinity 
or  of  the  author  of  nature  himself,  capable  of  knowing  the 
system  of  the  universe.'  l 

'  Capable  of  knowing  the  system  of  the  universe ' — science, 
philosophy,  religion  are  all  included  in  the  phrase.  The 
animal  soul  reacts  to  its  particular  environment,  and  asks  no 
questions;  but  the  outlook  of  the  rational  mind  is  universal. 
Man  weighs  in  a  balance  the  earth  on  which  he  moves,  an 
insignificant  speck;  he  calculates  the  distance,  the  mass, 
and  the  movements  of  the  farthest  stars;  he  dissolves  the 
solid  framework  of  material  things  into  a  whirl  of  invisible 
elements  and  forces;  he  traces  the  history  of  his  own  and 
of  other  worlds  '  in  the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time  ' ; 
he  foresees  his  own  death  and  the  death  of  his  race.  He 
asks  the  meaning  of  it  all,  and  he  names  the  name  of  God. 
Man  alone  philosophizes,  and  man  is  the  only  religious  ani- 
mal. The  omnipresence  of  religion  in  the  human  race,  often 
remarked  on,  however  rude  in  origin  and  however  gross  the 
superstitions  with  which  it  is  first  associated,  is  a  symbol 
..of. .the  step  from  the  finite  particulars  of  the  senses  to  the 
1  Monadology,  section  83. 


238  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

universal  of  thought.  It  is  the  beginning  of  the  quest  of 
God,  and  the  quest  means  that  God  is  present  in  a  new  way 
in  the  creature  that  undertakes  it.  '  Spirits  alone  ',  says 
Leibnitz  again,  '  are  made  in  His  image,  and  are,  as  it  were, 
of  His  race,  or  like  children  of  the  house,  since  they  alone 
can  serve  him  freely  and  act  with  knowledge,  in  imitation 
of  the  divine  nature.' * 

This  view  of  man,  it  need  hardly  be  added,  is  suggestive 
of  anything  else  than  of  self-glorification.  Mr.  Bradley 
refers,  in  the  context  of  the  passage  I  have  last  quoted,  to 
'that  vapouring,  new  or  old,  about  Humanity,  which,  if  it 
were  not  ambiguous,  would  be  hardly  sane  '.  And  one  recalls 
Comte's  foolish  phrase  about  the  heavens  declaring  the  glory, 
not  of  God,  but  of  Kepler  and  Newton,  or  that  other  about 
'  the  regency  of  God  during  the  long  minority  of  Humanity  ', 
and  the  echo  of  such  things  in  Swinburne's  '  Hymn  to  Man  ' : 

Glory  to  Man  in  the  highest!  for  Man  is  the  master  of 
things. 

And  Mr.  Bradley  has  also  in  view,  I  doubt  not,  the  more 
recent  excesses  of  some  Pragmatists  and  so-called  Human- 
ists, those  who  speak  ambiguously  of  a  '  plastic  '  world,  of 
man  as  '  making '  both  truth  and  reality,  or  who  acclaim  as 
the  essence  of  modern  humanity  '  the  desire  and  determina- 
tion to  have  a  voice  and  a  vote  in  the  cosmic  councils  ',2  who 
write  articles  on  '  The  Democratic  Conception  of  God  ',3  in 
which  they  tell  us  that '  society,  democratic  from  end  to  end, 
can  brook  no  such  class  distinctions  '  as  the  effete  European 
contrast  between  God  and  man.  But  in  examining  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  last  year,  we  saw  the  fallacy  involved 
in  treating  humanity  as  a  self-contained  entity,  a  kind  of 
Absolute  on  its  own  account.  Ideals  would  be  impossible 

1  Quoted  in  Latta's  Leibniz,  p.  266  (note),  from  Gerhardt's  edition  of 
the  Philosophical  Works,  vol.  iv,  p.  461. 

*  A.  W.  Moore,  Pragmatism  and  its  Critics,  p.  72. 

*  H.  A.  Overstreet,  Hibbert  Journal,  January  1913. 


xii       THE  NATURE  OF  OUR  ASSURANCE       239 


to  a  self-contained  finite  entity.  XcL-irame-.  an.  ideal  .and 
pursue  it  means  the  presence  of  the  infinite  in  the  finite 
experience;  or,  from  the  other  side,  it  is  the  mark  of  the 
finite  being  who  is  partaker  in  an  infinite  life.  All  claims, 
therefore,  made  on  man's  behalf,  must  be  based  on  the 
objectivity  of  the  values  revealed  in  his  experience,  and 
brokenly  realized  there.  Man  does  not  make  values  any 
more  than  he  makes  reality.  The  soul,  in  Plato's  metaphor, 
'  feeds  upon  '  truth,  upon  goodness,  upon  beauty  ;  and  these, 
being  all  infinite  in  their  essence,  humble,  as  well  as  exalt, 
the  finite  subject  to  whom  they  display  their  features. 

A  few  words  more  may  be  added  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  assurance  with  which  we  hold  our  position.  The  logical 
principle  of  non-contradiction,  or,  to  express  it  more  largely, 
the  principle  of  intellectual  coherence,  we  must  and  do 
accept  as  absolute.  We  accept  it  as  a  necessity  of  reason 
involved  in  the  possibility  of  knowing  anything  —  involved 
therefore  in  all  practical  living  as  well  as  in  the  immov- 
able belief  in  law  or  order  which  inspires  all  scientific 
investigation.  And,  needless  to  say,  life  and  science  alike 
vindicate  the  principle;  all  experience  may  be  looked  upon 
as  its  progressive  verification.  But  if  we  ask  what  is  the 
nature  of  our  certainty  that  existence,  the  world  of  facts,  is 
ultimately  and  throughout  intellectually  coherent  —  that  we 
have  to  do,  in  short,  not  with  a  chaos  but  with  a  cosmos, 
a  world  whose  laws  may  be  infinitely  complex  and  difficult 
to  unravel,  but  which  will  never  put  us  to  permanent  intel- 
lectual confusion  —  we  are  bound  to  reply  that  in  a  sense  it  is 
an  unproved  belief.  It  is  unproved  in  the  sense  that  we 
have  not  explored  the  whole  of  existence,  and  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  can  never  hope  to  include  all  the  facts  within  the 
net  of  reason.  And  hence  it  may  perhaps  be  called  a  postu- 
late of  reason,  a  supreme  hypothesis.  Many  would  describe 
it  as  a  '  venture  of  faith  ',  and  as  such  it  has  been  luminously 


24o  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  LECT. 

treated,  as  the  first  step  in  the  theistic  argument,  by  my 
own  revered  teacher,  Professor  Campbell  Eraser,  in  his 
»  Gifford  Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  Theism.  In  a  similar 
spirit  Lotze  speaks  of  '  the  confidence  of  reason  in  itself '  as 
the  faith  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all  knowledge. 

We  have  most  of  us,  I  suppose,  as  good  moderns  and 
children  of  the  light,  had  our  gibe  at  the  ontological  argu- 
ment,   and    savoured    Kant's    pleasantry   of    the    hundred 
dollars.      But   this    fundamental   confidence   of   reason   in 
f  itself  is  just  what  the  ontological  argument  is  really  labour- 
.  ing  to  express — the  confidence,  namely,  that  thought,  when 
made  consistent  with  itself,  is  true,  that  necessary  implica- 

jj      *  •*  ——**"-«.••    "^     "" ***     •        — •     •"         -•*•        -""*        '-I**' 

,  tion  in  thought  expresses  a  similar  implication  in  reality. 

*  In  this  large  sense,  the  truthfulness  of  thought — its  ultimate 
truthfulness — is  certainly  the  presupposition  of  all  thinking : 
otherwise  there  could  be  no  inducement  to  indulge  in  the 
operation.  To  that  extent  we  all  believe,  as  Mr.  Bradley 
puts  it  in  a  rather  incautious  phrase,  that  '  existence  must 
correspond  with  our  ideas  '.  When  I  say, '  we  all  believe  it,' 
I  mean  that  it  is  the  first  and  natural  attitude  of  the  mind  to 
the  world,  that  it  never  ceases  to  be  our  practical  assump- 
tion, and  that,  although  a  little  philosophy  may  lead  us 
for  a  time  into  the  wilderness  of  scepticism  and  relativism, 
depth  in  philosophy  brings  us  back  with  fuller  insight  to 
the  sanity  of  our  original  position.  And  Mr.  Bradley 's  con- 
fidence that  '  the  main  tendencies  of  our  nature  '  must 
'  reach  satisfaction  in  the  Absolute  ',  or  Professor  Bosan- 
quet's  readiness  to  '  stake  [his]  whole  belief  in  reality  .  .  . 
on  the  general  "  trueness  and  being  "  of  whole  provinces  of 
advanced  experience  such  as  religion  or  morality  or  the 
world  of  beauty  or  of  science  ',  is,  in  effect,  an  extension  to 
our  nature  as  a  whole  of  the  fundamental  confidence  ex- 
pressed in  the  ontological  argument.  We  are  more  or  less 
familiar  with  this  claim  to  objectivity  on  behalf  of  the 
deliverances  of  the  moral  faculty.  The  voice  of  conscience 


xii          THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  241 

is  frequently  referred  to  in  popular  philosophy  as  the  voice  S 
of  God.  The  claim  is  made  by  modern  philosophy  in  a  more 
general  form,  and  because  it  has  been  more  critically  sifted, 
it  is  no  doubt  vaguer  in  its  outcome  than  the  old  intuitional 
argument  used  to  be.  Fundamentally,  it  is  the  conviction 
that  '  the  best  we  think,  or  can  think,  must  be  ' — a  form  of 
statement  which  perhaps  enables  us  to  see  the  real  intention 
of  the  old  scholastic  argument  that  '  a  perfect  being  neces- 
sarily exists  '.  In  other  words,  the  possibilities  of  thought 
cannot  exceed  the  actuality  of  being;  our  conceptions  of  the 
ideal  in  their  highest  range  are  to  be  taken  as  pointing  to  a 
real  Perfection,  in  which  is  united  all  that,  and  more  than,  it 
has  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive. 

Admittedly,  however,  such  a  conception  transcends  the 
empirical  reality  of  man's  own  nature  or  of  the  factual  world 
around  him,  just  as  the  perfectly  coherent  intellectual  whole 
transcends  the  achieved  results  of  knowledge.  And,  so  far, 
the  argument  seems  parallel  in  the  two  cases;  in  both  there 
is  an  aspect  of  faith,  and  in  both  a  similar  claim  to  objec- 
tivity. But  it  is  idle  to  deny  that,  although  the  belief  in  ulti- 
mate Goodness  and  Perfection  at  the  heart  of  things  may  be 
held  with  a  more  passionate  energy  of  conviction  than  the 
more  colourless  postulate  of  the  intellect,  it  does  not  present 
itself  to  most  minds  with  the  same  impersonal  logical 
cogency.  '  The  ultimate  identity  of  value  and  existence  '  has 
been  described  as  the  great  venture  of  faith  to  which  mys- 
ticism and  speculative  idealism  are  committed.1  It  has  often 
been  described  by  religious  thinkers  as  a  '  wager '.  It  has 
been  treated  as  not  in  the  strict  sense  a  conclusion  of  the 
intellect  at  all,  but  a  decision  of  character  given  out  of  a 
man's  own  moral  and  religious  experience.  Hence  Fichte, 
who  as  much  as  any  man  believed  in  the  coercive  demonstra- 
tions of  thought,  can  say,  describing  the  great  philosophical 
antithesis  between  naturalism  and  idealism,  '  the  kind  of 

1  In  an  article  by  Dean  Inge  in  The  Times  Literary  Supplement, 
March  20,  1913. 


242  THE  CRITERION  OF  VALUE  xn 

philosophy  we  choose  depends  upon  the  kind  of  men  we  are ' ; 
and  Eucken  in  our  own  day,  under  the  name  of  Activism, 
puts  forward  his  '  spiritual  Idealism  '  as  a  problem  to  be 
worked  out  by  each  man  for  himself,  a  truth  to  be  embraced 
by  a  supreme  act  of  the  personality,  and  proved  true  by  its 
consequences  for  life.  So,  as  we  all  remember,  William 
James,  in  his  spirit-stirring  essay  on  the  '  Will  to  Believe  ', 
represents  a  man's  theoretical  conclusions  as  to  the  spiritual 
or  non-spiritual  character  of  the  universe  as  a  personal  cleav- 
ing to  the  one  alternative  or  the  other,  an  act  which  has  its  own 
influence  in  validating  for  the  cosmos  the  hypothesis  adopted. 
But  here  we  pass  away  from  the  point  of  view  of  religious 
idealism  into  a  moral  dualism  or  Zorbastrianism,  and  the 
discussion  of  such  a  position  would  lead  us  too  far.  But 
it  may  at  least  be  said  that  on  this  path  we  are  in  danger 
of  losing  the  meaning  of  truth  altogether  and  forgetting 
the  function  of  philosophy.  k  Philosophy  is  not  an  effort  to 
help  the  good  cause  in  a  cosmic  duel,  but  an  attempt  to  find 
out  the  truth  about  the  universe — to  find  out,  for  example, 
whether  it  is  such  a  duel  or  not.  Hence,  whatever  aspect  of 
faith  may  cling  to  a  philosophical  conclusion,  it  must  be  pre- 
sented as  the  conclusion  of  the  reason  upon  a  consideration 
^of  all  the  evidence  and  after  due  weight  assigned  to  all  the 
modes  of  our  experience.  It  must  be  our  reasonable  faith, 
and  I  note  how  that  expression,  emphasizing  both  aspects  of 
the  case,  occurs  prominently  even  in  a  theory  of  Absolutism 
like  Professor  Bosanquet's,  who  also,  as  we  saw  in  the  pas- 
sage quoted,  adopts  the  familiar  metaphor  of  '  staking  our 
whole  belief  in  reality  '  on  the  truth  or  trustworthiness  of 
certain  great  provinces  of  our  experience.  '  We  must  be- 
lieve '  is  Mr.  Bradley's  way  of  stating  his  ultimate  conclu- 
sion; and  if  I  commented  on  his  frequent  references  to  our 
ignorance  of  the  '  how  ',  it  was  not  that  I  questioned  the  pro- 
priety of  the  confession,  but  because  of  its  incongruity  with 
other  dogmatic  claims  and  pronouncements  of  the  author. 


LECTURE  XIII 
THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL 

ACCORDING  to  the  argument  of  the  preceding  lecture,  it 
js  from  the  ideals  present  and  o.pprativ^  in  man's  life  that, 
we  draw  our  criterion  of  value  and,  qf  the  same  time,  our 
conviction  of  the  "aUlTp  nf  fh^  system  in  which  we  live.  In 
what  follows,  I  wish  particularly  to  insist  that  here  too  we 
are  drawing  upon  experience.  Man's  experience  is  not 
limited,  in  the  moral  life,  for  example,  to  the  '  is  '  of  his 
actual  achievement,  or,  in  the  contemplation  and  production 
of  the  beautiful,  to  the  beauty  which  the  artist  has  succeeded 
in  embodying  in  his  poem,  his  painting,  or  his  symphony. 
In  Marlowe's  great  words  : 

If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 
Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts, 
And  every  sweetness  that  inspired  their  hearts, 
Their  minds  and  muses  on  admired  themes  : 
If  all  the  heavenly  quintessence  they  'still 
From  their  immortal  flowers  of  poesy, 
Wherein  as  in  a  mirror  we  perceive 
The  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit: 
If  these  had  made  one  poem's  period, 
And  all  combined  in  beauty's  worthiness, 
Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest.1 

And,  as  in  the  quest  of  beauty,  so  in  the  life  of  moral 

endeavour.     The  best  and  nohlest  looks.  .up  .to  a  better  and 


1  Cf.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  on  the  painter's  ideal  :  '  Tfap  g«'gM 
beheld  it.  nor  has  the  hand  expressed  it.    It  is  an  ideal  residing  ia  thp 
Abreast  of  the  artist,  which  he  is  always  labouring  to  impart,  and  which 
he  dies  at  last  without  imparting.' 


244         THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL         LECT. 

nobler;  with  a  strange  mingling  of  ardour  and  despair  he 

"strains  his  eyes  towards  an  unapproachable  perfection. 
Hence  Browning's  familiar  paradox  that  life's  success  lies 
in  its  failures,  and  that  the  divine  verdict,  in  contrast  to  the 
world's,  is  passed,  not  upon  the  paltry  sum  of  a  man's  deeds 
and  attainments,  but  upon  the  visions  of  goodness  which 
were  his  own  despair  : 

tn  h^ 


AnH  wfl§  not,  comforts  me. 

Such  a  passage  requires,  of  course,  to  be  read  with  under- 
standing. The  question  is  not  of  the  casual  inoperative 
wish,  or  the  formal  acknowledgement  of  the  more  excellent 
way,  on  the  part  of  those  confirmed  in  self-indulgence. 
Obviously,  where  there  is  no  attempt,  there  can  be  no 
failure.  It  is  the  vision  of  goodness  which  has  pierced 
a  man  with  a  sense  of  his  own  unworthiness,  the  ideal  after 
which  he  has  painfully  limped  —  it  is  of  these  things  that  the 
poet  speaks.  And  what  I  am  concerned  to  emphasize  is 
simply  that,  according  to  a  doctrine  of  imman^ye  rightly 
understood,  man's  '  reach  '  as  well  as  his  'grasp  '  must  be 
taken  into  account;  for  the  presence  of  the  ideal  in  nuqjan 
experience  is  as  much  a  fact  as  any  other.  It  is,  indeed, 
much  morejjt  is  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  that 
experience. 

This  is  frequently  neglected.  Philosophers  are  apt  to 
treat  human  nature  as  a  finite  and  strictly  self-contained 
fact,  exhaustively  revealed  in  its  past  record  or  in  its  present 
achievement.  This  is  the  defect  in  Hume's  otherwise  just 
contention  that  every  cause  must  be  judged  by  its  effects. 
We  have  no  call,  and  no  right,  he  argues,  to  attribute  more 
intelligence  or  goodness  to  the  causal  principle  of  the  uni- 
verse than  we  find  actually  exhibited  in  the  facts  as  we  see 
them.  But  finite  premisses  can  never  prove  an  infinite  con- 
clusion ;  the  limited  and  partial  goodness  of  which  we  have 


xiii  HUME'S  CHALLENGE  245 

historical  experience  cannot  of  itself  justify  us  in  treating 
the  whole  history  as  the  operation  of  a  Being  of  infinite 
goodness,  wisdom,  and  benevolence.  And  so  Cleanthes  tells 
us,  at  a  turn  of  the  argument,  that  he  has  been  apt  to  suspect 
the  frequent  repetition  of  the  word  infinite  in  theological 
writers  to  savour  more  of  panegyric  than  of  philosophy. 
We  should  get  on  better,  he  suggests,  '  were  we  to  rest  con- 
tented with  more  accurate  and  more  moderate  expressions  '. 
The  facts,  as  Hume  sees  them,  present  a  motley  spectacle  in 
which,  to  the  dispassionate  observer,  evil  may  well  seem  on 
the  whole  predominant  over  good.1  But  this  impression 
may  be  due,  I  would  suggest,  to  the  external  attitude  of  the 
dispassionate  spectator  so  characteristic  of  Hume.  Just  as 
his  general  argument  is  based  on  a  consideration  of  '  the 
works  of  nature  ',  in  which  no  account  is  taken  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  human  nature,  so  when  human  phenomena  do 
perforce  come  up  for  discussion,  they  are  likewise  judged 
as  they  would  be  by  a  spectator  ab  extra,  necessarily  limited 
.  in  his  data  to  overt  manifestations,  and  ignorant  of  the 
conditions  of  the  inner  drama  of  which  these  actions  are  the 
outcome  and,  as  it  were,  the  external  register.  But  in 


moral  experience,  finite  and  even  j)altry  as  the  outcome  in 
word  or  deed  may  appear,  there  may  be  an  infinite  factor 
involved.  How  otherwise,  indeed,  can  we  explain  the  human 
capacity  of  choice  and  man's  long  struggle  to  rise  above 
himself?  Is  it  not  just  the  power  of  framing  (and  conse- 
quently of  following)  an  ideal  which  constitutes  man's 
nature  as  a  rational  creature  —  which  makes  him  more  than 
an  intermittent  pulse  of  animal  desire  ?  JVIan's  ideals  are,  in 
..a  sense,  the  creative  forces  that  shape  his  life  from  within. 
sThey  have  brought  him  thus  far,  and  they  confer  upon  him 
the  possibility  of  an  endless  advance.  As  Edward  Caird 
puts  it  :  '  Their  prophecies  mav  be  truer  than  history,  because 
they  contain  something  more  of  the  divine  than  history 
1  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion,  Part  XI. 


246          THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL          LECT. 

.has  expressed- *s  yet,  or-  perhaps  than  it  ever  ran..iullz 
express.' 1 

Whence,  then,  are  these  ideals  derived  and  what  is  the 
meaning  of  their  presence  in  the  human  soul?  -Whence 
dflfTi  Man  nrnnrnn  thii  millnnlf  upon  a -per  feet  Truth  and. 
.Beauty  and  an  infinite  Goodness,  the  world  of  empirical 
.  fact  being,  as  Bacon  says,  in  proportion  inferior  to  the  soul? 
Man  did  not  weave  them  out  of  nothing  any  more  than  he 
brought  himself  into  being.  '  It  is  He  that  hath  made 
us,  and  not  we  ourselves  ' ;  and  from  the  same  fontal 
Reality  must  be  derived  those  ideals  which  are  the  master- 
light  of  all  our  seeing,  the  element,  in  particular,  of  our 
moral  and  religious  life.  The  presence  of  the  Ideal  is  the 
reality  of  God  within  us.  This  is,  in  essentials,  the  famous 
argument  for  the  existence  of  God  which  meets  us  at  the 
beginning  of  modern  philosophy — the  argument  from  the 
wfact  of  man's  possession  of  the  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being, 
..which  forms  the  centre,  indeed  the  abiding  substance,  of 
Descartes's  philosophy.  This  idea,  Descartes  reminds  us,  is 
not  just  an  idea  which  we  happen  to  find  as  an  individual 
item  in  the  mind,  like  our  ideas  of  particular  objects.  It  is 
innate,  he  says,  in  his  old-fashioned  misleading  terminology. 
He  means  that  it  is  organic  to  the  very  structure  of  intelli- 
gence, knit  up  indissolubly  with  that  consciousness  of  self 
which  he  treated  as  his  foundation-certainty — so  that  our 
experience  as  self-conscious  beings  cannot  be  described  with- 
out implying  it.  '  I  must  not  imagine  ',  he  says  in  the  Third 

1  Evolution  of  Religion,  vol.  ii,  p.  9.  Caird  is  commenting  upon  the 
well-known  passage  in  which  Goethe  sets  the  world  of  inner  experience 
beside  the  larger  cosmos  revealed  to  us  in  perception,  and  in  which  he 
justifies  the  popular  identification  of  the  divine  with  the  best  that  we 
know  or  can  conceive : 

Im  Innern  ist  ein  Universum  auch, 
Daher  der  Volker  loblicher  Gebrauch, 
Dass  jeglicher  das  Beste  was  er  kennt, 
Er  Gott,  ja  seinen  Gott,  benennt. 


xm         THE  IDEA  OF  A  PERFECT  BEING         247 

Meditation,  '  that  the  conception  of  the  infinite  is  got  merely 
by  negation  of  the  finite.  .  .  .  On  the  contrary  I  plainly  see 
that  there  is  more  reality  in  the  infinite  substance  than 
in  the  finite  substance,  so  much  so  that  it  may  even  be 
said  that  my  consciousness  of  the  infinite  is  in  some  sense 
prior  to  my  consciousness  of  the  finite — or,  in  other  words, 
that  my  consciousness  of  God  is  prior  to  my  consciousness, 
of  myself.  For  how  could  I  doubt  or  desire,  how  could 
I  be  conscious,  that  is  to  say,  that  anything  is  wanting  to 
me,  and  that  I  am  not  altogether  perfect,  if  I  had  not 
within  me  the  idea  of  a  being  more  perfect  than  myself  by 
comparison  with  whom  I  recognize  the  defects  of  my 
nature  ?  *  The  finite  self,  in  short,  with  which  Descartes 
appeared  to  start  as  an  absolute  and  independent  certainty, 
is  not  really  an  independent  being  at  all.  It  can  neither 
exist  nor  be  known  in  isolation:  it  knows  itself  only  as 
a  member  of  a  larger  life.  The  idea  of  God,  Descartes 
says  elsewhere,1  originates  along  with  the  idea  of  self  and 
is  innate  in  the  same  sense  as  the  latter.  The  absolutely 
finite,  if  the  paradoxical  expression  may  be  pardoned,  would 
be  entirely  shut  up  within  the  four  walls  of  its  independent 
entity:  it  would  be  a  universe  to  itself  with  no  consciousness 
of  any  Beyond,  and  of  course,  therefore,  without  the  con- 
sciousness of  higher  or  lower.  But  man  is  not  finite  in  this 
sense.  Man  is  by  contrast  a^finite-infinite  being,  conscious 
of  finitude  only  through  the  presence  of  an  infinite  nature 
within  him.  The  possibility  of  aspiration,  infinite  dissatis- 
faction and  its  obverse,  the  capacity  for  infinite  progress — 
these  fundamental  characteristics  of  the  human  and  rational 
life  are  based  by  Descartes  on  the  existence  of  a  Perfect 
JBeing  revealing  himself  in  our  minds. 

We  need  not   follow  Descartes  in  the  mechanical  and 
external  details  of  his  theory — I  mean  in  the  separation  of 
the  idea  from  the  fact  it  represents,  the  treatment  of  it  as  an 
1  Towards  the  end  of  the  Third  Meditation. 


248         THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL          LECT. 

effect  produced  in  the  mind  by  an  external  cause — nor  need 
we  even  be  perturbed  if  doubts  invade  us  whether  we  really 
do  possess  such  a  positive  idea  of  an  absolutely  perfect 
Being  as  Descartes  seems  to  assert,  and  whether  it  is  this 
idea  which  we  use  as  a  standard  of  comparison.  It  has 
been  made  an  objection  to  Descartes's  argument  that  we 
know  only  degrees  of  more  and  less,  as  we  find  them  in 
experience,  and  that  by  a  process  of  idealization  from  these 
examples  we  frame  the  imagination  of  a  Being  indefinitely 
exceeding  the  greatest  and  the  best  we  know,  whom  we 
finally  proceed  to  clothe  with  superlatives  as  the  absolutely 
Perfect  Being.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  what  more  do  we  want 
for  the  purposes  of  the  argument  than  is  here  conceded? 
We  may  well  admit  that  we  do  not  rightly  know  in  what 
Perfection  consists.  It  is  something  which  we  feel  towards, 
whose  characters  we  divine  along  the  lines  of  our  own  high- 
est experiences;  and  our  idea  is,  to  the  end,  something 
approximative,  a  hint,  a  suggestion,  a  bare  outline.  If  by  a 
positive  idea  Descartes  is  supposed  to  mean  a  clear,  precise, 
and  adequate  idea,  then  it  is  certain  we  possess  no  such  idea 
of  a  Perfect  Being.  We  should  require  to  be  God  in  order 
to  construct  it.  But  what  Descartes  really  meant  by  his 
epithet  was  that  the  idea  is  not  a  mere  negation — as  if  we 
simply  clapped  a  '  not '  before  the  finite,  and  said  that  the 
infinite  is  what  the  finite  is  not.  The  idea  is  positive  up  to 
the  very  limits  of  conception,  including  all  that  is  real  in 
the  finite  and  infinitely  more.  But  that  '  more  ',  although  it 
is  the  moving  spirit  of  life  within  us,  we  do  not  possess  in 
terms  of  conscious  experience  or  of  thought  till  it  is  revealed 
to  us  bit  by  bit  '  with  the  process  of  the  suns  ',  and,  it  may 
often  be,  in  the  travail  of  our  souls. 

Let  it  be  frankly  admitted,  therefore,  that  we  do  not  use 
the  full-orbed  conception  as  our  direct  criterion  of  value, 
because  the  full-orbed  conception  is  not  ours.  The  human 
idea  of  God  or  of  perfection  is,  as  Locke  said  in  an  apt  phrase 


xiii        THE  COSMOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT        249 


of  our  idea  of  infinity,  'aiLpndlp'iii  growing  idea/  *  one  which 
grows  with  man's  own  growth,  acquiring  fresh  content  from 
every  advance  in  knowledge  or  in  goodness,  opening  up 
fresh  heights  and  depths  to  him  who  presses  honestly  for- 
ward ;  but  he  who  penetrates  farthest  will  be  the  last  to  say 

JJaat.  he  has  attained.  We  are  never  at  the  goal,  but  as  we 
move,  the  direction  in  which  it  lies  becomes  more  and  more 
definite.  The  movement  and  the  direction  imply  the  goal; 

Jhey  define  it  sufficiently  for  our  human  purposes;  and  in 
direct  experience  we  are  never  at  a  loss  to  know  what  is 

.higher  and  what  is  lower,  what  is  better  and  what  is  worse. 
A  criticism  of  the  ordinary  form  of  what  is  called  the 
cosmological  argument  leads  us  by  a  slightly  different  path 
to  a  similar  result  ;  for  again  what  we  have  is  the  argument 
from  the  less  to  the  more,  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite. 
In  form,  it  is  the  ordinary  argument  from  effect  to  cause, 
from  the  empirically  verified  existence  of  the  world  —  my 
own  existence  at  the  very  least  —  to  God  as  the  cause  which 
explains  that  existence.  So  we  have  it  in  Locke,  for 
example:  'Man  has  a  clear  conception  of  his  own  being; 
he  knows  certainly  that  he  exists  and  is  something.  ...  If, 
therefore,  we  know  that  thus  there  is  some  real  being,  and 
that  nonentity  cannot  produce  any  real  being,  it  is  an  evident 
demonstration  that  from  eternity  there  has  been  something. 
.  .  .  Again,  a  man  finds  in  himself  perception  and  knowl- 
edge, and  as  whatsoever  is  the  first  eternal  being  [cannot] 
give  to  another  any  perfection  that  it  hath  not,  either  actu- 
ally in  itself  or  in  a  higher  degree,  .it  necessarily  follows  that 
the  first  eternal  being  cannot  be  matter  but  must  be  an 

.eternal  mind.'  2  . 

It  is  at  this  point  that  we  are  faced  by  Hume's  rejoinder, 
already  referred  to  :  '  Whence  can  any  cause  be  known  but 

1  Essay,  II.  17.  7.  Cf.  section  12:  'a  growing  and  fugitive  idea,  still  in 
a  boundless  progression  that  can  stop  nowhere  ',  and,  in  the  end,  '  very 
far  from  a  positive  complete  idea'  (section  15). 

1  Essay,  IV.  10.  2-12. 


250          THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL         LECT. 

from  its  known  effects?'  We  reach  along  such  a  line  of 
argument  only  sufficient  power  and  sufficient  intelligence 
to  account  for  the  tangled  web  of  empirical  fact;  it  is 
impossible,  from  finite  and  imperfect  data  as  our  premisses, 
to  reach  the  infinite  and  perfect  in  our  conclusion.  But, 
as  Hegel  has  justly  pointed  out,  'such  a  criticism  of  the 
reasoning  misreads  entirely  the  logic  of  religion  and,  indeed, 
the  procedure  of  living  thought  in  any  sphere,  which  per- 
petually carries  us  in  the  conclusion  beyond  our  premisses. 
Otherwigff  why  re^^on  at  all,  if  there  is  no  advance?  The 
premisses  have  to  be  transformed,  set  in  another  light,  in 
order  to  yield  the  conclusion.  In  the  argument  which  we 
are  considering,  the  finite  empirical  world  is  certainly  our 
starting-point,  but  the  defect  of  the  ordinary  syllogistic 
form,  says  Hegel,  is  that  '  the  starting-point  is  taken  as  a 
solid  foundation  and  supposed  to  remain  so  throughout,  left 
at  last  just  as  it  was  at  the  first  .  .  .  as  if  we  were  reason- 
ing from  one  thing,  which  is  and  continues  to  be,  to  another 
thing  which  in  like  manner  is  '.  But  '  to  think  the  phenom- 
enal world  rather  means  to  re-cast  its  form  and  transmute 
it  into  a  universal';  and  'what  men  call  the  proofs  of 
God's  existence  are,  rightly  understood,  [just]  ways  of 
describing  and  analysing  the  active  course  of  thought,  the 
mind  thinking  the  data  of  the  senses  V  Hence  to  the  re- 
ligious man  the  passage  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite  does 
not  mean  that  the  empirical  world  is  '  anything  more  than 
the  point  of  departure  '.2  It  is,  in  fact,  the  contingcncc  of 
the  finite  which  is  the  whole  nerve  of  the  reasoning.  As  it 
has  been  put,  the  argument  is  not  so  much  '  Because  the  con- 
tingent is,  therefore  the  necessary  being  is';  it  is,  rather, 
'  Because  the  contingent  is  not,  the  necessary  being  is  '.3  It 
is  because  the  finite  facts  in  their  dispersedness  and  muta- 
bility seem  to  be  unable  to  stand  alone,  to  have  nothing 

1  Encyclopaedia,  section  50. 

*  Philosophy  of  Religion,  vol.  iii,  p.  287  (English  translation). 

'  Caird's  Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant,  vol.  ii,  p.  125. 


xm    FROM  IMPERFECT  TO  PERFECT    251 

stable  or  permanently  satisfactory  about  them,  and  to  be 
riddled  with  discord  and  contradiction,  that  the  mind  seeks 
to  pass  beyond  them,  as  fragmentary  appearances,  to  a 
reality  which  it  conceives  as  an  abiding  and  harmonious 
whole.  Hence  the  starting-point  is  cancelled,  so  far  as  its 
independent  existence  is  concerned.  '  The  apparent  means 
or  stepping-stone  vanishes,'  and  the  finite  is  recognized  as 
existing  only  in  and  through  the  infinite.  This  is  not  to  be 
interpreted,  however,  Hegel  urges,  as  if  the  finite  were 
merely  absorbed.  It  is  the  nature  of  the  infinite  to  express 
itself  in  the  finite;  and  the  living  fact  is  just  this  unity — the 
.realization  of  the  infinite  in  the  finite  and  the  recognition  by 
the  finite  of  its  own  groundedness  in  the  infinite. 

The  character  of  the  reasoning  is  expressed  in  the  name 
most  commonly  given  to  the  argument — the  argument  a 
contingentia  mundi — and  Professor  Bosanquet  describes  it, 
not  unfairly,  as  'jthe  essential  arg?1rn<ant  nf  mptapViysirs  '  and 
as  identical  ' in  alLJLig-alisf  philosophies  '*  The  necessary, 
as  opposed  to  the  contingent  in  the  argument,  is,  as  he  says, 
'  the  stable,  the  satisfactory,  the  fisfiaiovj  and  the  essence 
of  the  reasoning  is  an  '  inference  from  the  imperfection  of 
data  and  premisses  '.2  It  is  what  he  calls  'the  spirit  of 
totality  ',  working  within  us,  which  carries  us  forward.  The 
same  idea  of  the  spirit  of  the  whole  is  the  fundamental  mean- 
ing of  Aristotle's  great  doctrine  of  the  First  Mover,  operative 
in  the  universe  as  desire  or  love,  and  so,  through  the  quest  of 
satisfaction  and  self-completion,  drawing  all  things  to  itself. 
It  is  what  we  desire — what  we  are  not,  but  what  we  have  the 
power  to  become- — that  is  the  moving  power  in  all  advance. 

Our  destiny,  our  being's  heart  and  home, 
Is  with  infinitude,  and  only  there; 
With  hope  it  is,  hope  that  can  never  die, 
Effort,  and  expectation,  and  desire, 
And  something  evermore  about  to  be.3 
1  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  262.  *  Ibid.,  p.  267. 

3  Wordsworth,  The  Prelude,  Book  VI. 


252         THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL         LECT. 


.-Hence  the  icfefll  is  precisely  the  most  rqaj  thing  in  the 
world;  andjhose  ranges  of  our  experience,  such  as  religion, 
which  are  specifically  concerned  with  the  ideal,  instead  of 
being  treated  as  a  cloud-cuckoo-land  of  subjective  fancy, 
may  reasonably  be  accepted  as  the  best  interpreters  we  have 
of  the  true  nature  of  reality.  And  certainly  in  no  sphere  of 
our  experience  is  the  implication  of  objectivity  —  the  '  truth- 
claim  ',  as  it  has  been  called  —  more  insistent,  one  might  say, 
more  overwhelming,  than  just  in  the  moral  and  religious  life. 
Reverence  for  the  moral  law,  the  self-humiliation  caused  by 


failure  to  fulfil  its  demands,  the  sense  of  sin,  the  attitude 
of  worship  and  utter  self -surrender,  are  possible  only  if  the 
subject  feels  himself  in  presence  of  a  Reality  beside  which 
all  else  pales  into  insignificance.  And  it  is  to  the  moral  and 
religious  man  himself  that  we  must  go,  not  to  the  philoso- 
pher weaving  theories  about  him,  if  we  are  to  understand 
his  experience  aright.  The  religious  man's  account  of  his 
experience  may  be  overlaid  with  accretions  and  survivals 
of  primitive  custom  and  belief;  and  on  these  accessories 
philosophical  criticism  and  historical  research  have  their 
legitimate  work  to  do.  But  the  fundamental  presupposi- 
tions of  any  experience  must  be  accepted  from  the  experi- 
ence itself:  they  may  be  explained,  but  not  explained  away. 
On  the  evidence  of  the  moral  and  religious  life,  therefore, 
we  are  bound  to  treat  the  ideals  of  that  life  not  as  devout 
imaginations,  in  which  fancy  has  combined  with  desire  to 
heighten  and  idealize  certain  features  of  the  actual,  but  as 
having  their  authentic  basis  in  the  nature  of  the  world.  In 
Mr.  Bradley's  words :  <_There  is  nothing  more  real  than  what 
comes  in  religion--  To  compare  facts  such  as  these  with  what 
conies  to  us  in  outward  existence  would  be  to  trifle  with  the 
subject.  The  man  who  demands  a  reality  more  solid  than 
that  of  the  religious  consciousness  knows  not  what  he  seeks/  * 
The  presence  and  power  of  the  Ideal  is  the  solution  of 

1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  449. 


xm     IMMANENCE  AND  TRANSCENDENCE     253 

the  question  at  issue  in  the  ever-renewed  debate  between 
immanence  and  transcendence.  Without  the  acknowledge- 
ment of  the  Ideal,  a  doctrine  of  immanence  must  degenerate 
into  an  acceptance  and  justification  of  the  actual,  just  as 
we  find  it.  In  Pope's  shallow  phrase,  '  whatever  is,  is  right '. 
This  is  the  lower  Pantheism,  of  which  we  spoke  in  the  first 
lecture  of  this  series;  and  it  is  to  be  observed  that  such  a 
theory,  by  ascribing  everything  that  happens  to  the  direct 
or  immediate  agency  of  God,  is  a  virtual  denial  of  the  exist- 
ence of  reflective  self-conscious,  spiritual  centres,  such  as  we 
know  them  in  our  own  experience.  For  although  we  often 
talk,  in  a  legitimate  metaphor,  of  individuals  as  the  vehicle 
or  the  channel  of  certain  divine  ideas  or  purposes,  the  self- 
conscious  individual  must  appropriate  the  idea  in  order  to 
transmit  it;jie  must  identify,  himself  with  the  purpose  in 
order  to  be  its  instrument.  On  the  theory  which  we  are 
criticizing,  however,  the  metaphor  is  taken  as  literal  fact, 
and  such  self-reference  is  no  more  possible  to  the  individual 
centre  than  it  is  to  the  water-pipe  in  respect  of  the  water 
which  courses  through  it.  .We  are  all  divine  automata,  with 
at  most  a  passive  sentience  of  what  goes  on  within  us,  en- 
during the  course  of  events  as  they  happen.  Immanence, 
JcTunderstood,  reduces  both  God  and  man  to  meaningless 
terms,  for  God  becomes  simply  a  collective  name  for  a  world 
of  thinys  which  simply  exist.  In  such  a  world  there  is  not 
room  even  for  the  most  ordinary  case  of  desire-prompted 
action;  for  desire,  as  distinguished  from  recurrent  appetite, 
implies  the  idea  of  a  better.  And  the  idea  of  a  better  means 
the  idea  of  the  self  as  finding  satisfaction  in  a  state  of  things 
different  from  its  actual  situation.  Paltry  or  evanescent  as 
the  particular  satisfaction  may  be,  we  have  in  such  simple 
experiences  the  origin  of  the  ideal  self,  the  conception  of 
which,  as  a  permanent  and  authoritative  object  of  desire, 
it  is  the  function  of  experience  in  the  individual  and  in  the 
race  to  develop  and  organize.  Apart  from  this  capacity  of 


254         THE  IDEAL  AND  THE  ACTUAL          LECT. 

self -reference,  there  can  be  no  ideals,  but  only  bare  facts. 
And  if  the  lower  Pantheism  is  justly  criticized  as  being 
indistinguishable  from  Atheism,  the  reason  is  that  there  can 
be  no  true  doctrine  of  God  which  is  not  based  on  a  true 
doctrine  of  man.  Now  dft  paflfM*  ni  Human  t^w  ia  j"^ 
as  the  poet  expresses  it, 

Effort  and  expectation  and;  desire  . 

And  something  evermore  about  to  be—- 
the contrast  between  the  actual  present  and  the  unrealized 
future,  passing  into  the  deeper  contrast  between  the  '  is  ' 
and  the  '  ought-to-be  ',  and  the  duality  of  what  is  commonly 
called  the  lower  and  the  higher  self,  with  the  discord  and 
the  struggle  thence  resulting. 

JThe  process  of  such  a  life  is  explicable  only  through  the 
actual  presence  within  it,  or  to  it,  of  the  Perfection  to  which 
it  aspires.  Theories  of  the  sheer  transcendence  of  the  divine 
defeat  their  own  object,  because  the  very  exaltation  of  the 
divine  into  an  inaccessible  Beyond  confers  a  spurious  inde- 
pendence or  self -existence  upon  the  finite.  It  is  treated  as 
existing  in  its  own  right.  But  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  treat 
God  and  man  as  two  independent  facts,  we  lose  our  hold 
upon  the  experienced  fact,  which  is  the  existence  of  the  one 
in  the  other  and  through  the  other.  Most  people  would  prob- 
ably be  willing  to  admit  this  mediated  existence  in  the  case 
of  man,  but  they  might  feel  it  akin  to  sacrilege  to  make  the 
same  assertion  of  God.  And  yet,  if  our  metaphysic  is,  as 
it  professes  to  be,  an  analysis  of  experience,  the  implication 
is  strictly  reciprocal.  God  has  no  meaning  to  us  out  of  rela- 
tion to  our  own  lives  or  to  spirits  resembling  ourselves  in 
their  finite  grasp  and  infinite  reach;  and,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  we  have  absolutely  no  grounds  for  positing  his 
existence  out  of  that  reference. 

I  have  commented  in  a  previous  lecture — in  connexion 
with  Kant  and  Martineau — on  the  unworkableness  of  a 


xm  THE  CREATION  OF  A  SOUL  255 

purely  transcendent  theory,  and  in  the  sequel  I  hope  to 
deal  more  explicitly  with  what  I  hold  to  be  the  true  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  life.  In  the  present  connexion  it  may  be 
sufficient  to  suggest  that  the  transcendence  which  must  be 
retained,  and  which  is  intelligible,  refers  to  a  distinction  of 
value  or  of  quality,  not  to  the  ontological  separateness  of 
one  being  from  another.  It  refers,  as  we  have  seen  in  this 
lecture,  to  the  infinite  greatness  and  richness  of  the  contain- 
ing Life,  as  compared  with  anything  as  yet  appropriated  by 
the  finite  creature.  But  the  creation  of  a  soul  is  not  com- 
parable to  the  manufacture  of  an  article,  which  remains 
throughout  something  separate  from  its  maker,  and  which 
is  dismissed,  when  finished,  to  do  the  specific  work  for  which 
its  designer  has  fitted  it.  It  may  be  more  fitly  represented 
by  the  addition  of  a  child  to  a  family.  But  it  is  something 
more  intimate  still;  for  the  filaments  which  unite  the  finite 
spirit  to  its  creative  source  are  never  severed.  JHie.  Pro- 
ductive Reason  remains  at  once  the  sustaining  element  of 
.he  dependent  life,  and  the  living  content,  continually  offer- 
ing itself  to  the  soul  which  it  has  awakened  to  the  knowl- 
edge and  the  quest  of  itself. 


LECTURE  XIV 
THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE  FINITE  INDIVIDUAL 

THE  Ideal  was  treated  in  the  preceding  lecture  as  the 
infinite  present  in  the  finite,  and  we  thus  naturally  found 
ourselves  involved  towards  the  close  in  the  general  question 
of  the  relation  of  the  finite  individual  to  the  creative  prin- 
ciple of  its  life.  I  propose,  in  this  lecture  and  the  one  which 
follows,  to  deal  with  this  subject — to  discuss  what  I  may 
call  the  status  of  the  finite  individual — mainly  in  the  light 
of  its  recent  treatment  by  Professor  Bosanquet  in  his 
suggestive  volume  on  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the 
Individual,  with  such  reference  as  may  be  called  for  to 
Mr.  Bradley's  doctrine  in  Appearance  and  Reality  and  the 
theories  of  Spinoza  and  Hegel,  in  which  Professor  Bosan- 
quet's  treatment  will  generally  be  found  to  have  its  roots. 
I  believe  that  a  consideration  of  Professor  Bosanquet's  posi- 
tion is  likely  to  prove  especially  helpful,  because  in  both 
his  Gifford  volumes  he  adopts  Keats's  description  of  the 
world  as  '  the  vale  of  soul-making  ',  and  frequently  speaks 
in  that  sense  as  if  the  moulding  of  individual  souls  were  the 
typical  business  of  the  universe,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
strong  monistic  trend  of  his  thinking  tends  to  carry  him  in 
an  opposite  direction — to  the  view  that  '  the  formal  distinct- 
ness '  of  finite  selves  is  an  appearance  due  to  '  impotence  ' 
and  incidental  to  their  finitude.  From  this  point  of  view 
the  blending  or  fusion  of  individual  selves  in  an  absolute 
experience  becomes  (according  as  we  regard  it)  either  the 
consummation  of  their  effort  and  apparent  progress  in  time, 
or  the  timeless  reality  to  which  that  appearance  corresponds. 

It  will  be  well,  at  the  outset,  to  indicate  the  points  on 
which  we  are  agreed,  more  especially  as  certain  utterances 


xiv  FALSE  NOTIONS  OF  THE  SELF  257 

of  my  own  in  the  past  have  been  understood  as  a  typical 
and  extreme  expression  of  what  I  suppose  Professor  Bosan- 
quet  means  by  '  an  irrational  Personalism  ',  that  is,  as  he 
explains,  the  notion  of  '  the  personal  self  as  an  exclusive 
entity,  simply  living  out  a  nature  of  its  own  V  or,  again, 
what  he  calls  '  the  unreflecting  attitude  which  accepts 
[finite  selves  or  persons]  as  fundamentally  isolated  self- 
subsistent  beings,  externally  connected,  but  not  in  any 
genuine  sense  parts  of  the  same  stuff  or  elements  in  the 
same  spirit  '.2  Such  phrases  may  perhaps  describe  accu- 
rately the  old  doctrine  of  the  soul-substance  as  a  kind  of 
metaphysical  atom,  which  served  as  substrate  or  point  of 
attachment  for  the  individual's  experiences;  and  so  far  as 
these  experiences  are  regarded  by  any  thinker  as  subjective 
processes  going  on  within  this  substance,  as  in  a  kind  of 
closed  internal  space,  so  far  we  might  characterize  his  con- 
ception of  the  self  as  that  of  an  exclusive  entity  living  out 
a  nature  of  its  own.  Among  recent  treatments,  Dr.  McTag- 
gart's  theory  of  personal  identity,  based  on  identity  of 
substance,  has  certain  obvious  affinities  with  the  theory 
criticized.  'Dr.  McTaggart  does,  indeed,  expressly  describe 
the  self  as  '  a  substance  existing  in  its  own  right '; 3  though 
he  more  usually  speaks  of  it  as  a  fundamental  and  eternal 
differentiation  of  the  Absolute,  which  is  treated  as  the  unity 
or  society  of  such  persons,  without  being  itself  a  person. 
Or,  again,  we  found  Martineau,  in  his  insistence  on  the 
transcendence  of  the  Divine  as  the  source  of  obligation, 
speaking  of  the  '  unitary '  nature  of  personality  as  occupy- 
ing one  side  of  a  given  relation  and  unable  to  be  also  on 
the  other,  and  using  such  phrases  as  '  an  insulated  nature  ', 
a  being  existing  '  within  the  enclosure  of  his  detached  per- 
sonality '.*  Such  expressions,  as  we  saw,  were  connected 

1  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  pp.  32-3.  *  Ibid.,  p.  46. 

*  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  37. 

*  Cf.  Lecture  II,  supra,  pp.  36-7. 


258    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

with  the  externally  deistic  conception  of  God  and  the  cor- 
respondingly individualistic  conception  of  man  which,  on 
the  whole,  dominate  Martineau's  formal  philosophy.  But 
a  closer  inspection  shows  that  these  phrases  are  applied  to 
the  hypothetical  case  of  '  one  lone  man  in  an  atheistic 
universe';  and  if  we  recall  Martineau's  frequent  designa- 
tion of  God,  in  his  philosophy  of  religion,  as  '  the  soul  of  all 
souls  ',  we  see  that  they  cannot  be  intended  to  apply  in  any 
literal  sense  to  the  relations  of  the  divine  to  the  human,  as 
they  exist  and  are  experienced  in  the  actual  universe.  Still, 
even  to  put  forward  the  hypothetical  case  is  evidence  of 
defective  philosophical  insight.  For  the  mere  individual 
nowhere  exists;  he  is  the  creature  of  a  theory. 

A  self  can  exist  only  in  vital  relation  to  an  objective 
system  of  reason  and  an  objective  world  of  ethical  observ- 
ance from  which  it  receives  its  content,  and  of  which  it  is, 
as  it  were,  the  focus  and  depositary.  Apart  from  these  it 
would  be  a  bare  point  of  mere  existence.  Historically,  the 
individual  is  organic  to  society,  to  which  he  is  sometimes 
said  to  be  subsequent;  for,  in  the  light  of  history,  it  is  not 
altogether  unmeaning  to  speak,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  does, 
of  '  the  genesis  ' — so  to  speak,  the  '  crystallizing  ' — of  the 
individual  soul  out  of  the  collective  soul  of  the  primitive 
community;  the  genesis,  at  any  rate,  of  anything  worthy 
to  be  called  self-consciousness.  Apart  from  questions  of 
origin,  it  is  certainly  true  that  it  is  only  by  a  convenient 
(though  often  misleading)  abstraction  that  we  can  discuss 
the  nature  and  conduct  of  the  individual  apart  from  the 
social  whole  in  which  he  is,  as  it  were,  imbedded,  and  of 
which  he  appears  to  be  the  product.  And  as  the  individual 
is  organic  to  society,  so  in  still  larger  philosophical  refer- 
ence the  individual  is  organic  to  a  universal  life  or  world, 
of  which  he  is  similarly  a  focus,  an  organ  or  expression. 
And  he  cannot  possibly  be  regarded  as  self-contained  in 
relation  to  that  life,  for  such  self-containedness  would  mean 


xiv   '  NOW  AND  HERE  IN  THE  ABSOLUTE '   259 

sheer  emptiness.  Both  his  existence  and  his  nature  (his 
'  that '  and  his  '  what ')  are  derived.  It  is  absurd  to  talk  of 
him  as  self-subsistent  or  existing  in  his  own  right.  He  exists 
as  an  organ  of  the  universe  or  of  the  Absolute,  the  one 
Being ;  and  from  the  same  source  he  draws  his  rational  and 
spiritual  content,  '  feeding ',  as  Plato  says,  '  on  mind  and 
pure  knowledge,  the  proper  food  of  every  soul  V 

Hence,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  rightly,  more  than  once, 
insists,  '  the  finite  self,  like  everything  in  the  universe,  is  now 
and  here  beyond  escape  an  element  in  the  Absolute  '.z  Or,  if 
we  use  the  more  concrete  terms  of  religion,  we  may  say  that 
no  act  of  creation  is  conceivable  or  possible  which  should 
extrude  us  from  the  life  of  God  and  place  us,  as  solitary 
units,  outside  the  courses  of  his  being.  The  individual  self, 
in  other  words,  does  not  exist  '  strong  in  solid  singleness  ', 
like  a  Lucretian  atom.  The  currents  of  the  divine  life  course 
through  it;  it  is  open  to  all  the  influences  of  the  universe. 
As  we  have  already  seen,3  how  should  we  explain  the  fact  of 
progress,  if  not  by  this  indwelling  in  a  larger  life — this  con- 
tinuity with  what  is  more  and  greater  than  ourselves  ?  And 
it  is  from  the  fact  that  the  finite  individual  is  thus  rooted  in 
a  wider  life,  to  whose  influences  it  remains  throughout  acces- 
sible, that  those  visitings  of  grace,  of  which  the  religious 
consciousness  testifies,  become  most  easily  intelligible — as 
well  as  those  more  violent  upheavals  of  the  personality  as  we 
have  known  it,  in  which,  as  religion  says,  the  man  is  born 
again  and  becomes  a  new  creature.  And  because,  so  long  as 
it  exists,  every  self  remains  in  principle  thus  accessible,  the 
possibility  of  such  regeneration  remains  open  to  the  most 
abandoned  or  degraded.  For  which  of  us  knows  his  own 
self  and  its  possibilities,  whether  for  good  or  for  evil? 
According  to  the  saying  of  M.  Bergson,  which  Professor 
Bosanquet  is  fond  of  quoting,  '  Nous  ne  nous  tenons  jamais 

1  Phaedrus,  247.  *  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  257. 

*  Lecture  II. 


26o   ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

tout  entiers  ' :  we  never  possess  ourselves  entirely.  If  we 
could,  we  should  be,  I  suppose,  either  the  Absolute  in  propria 
persona,  or  Browning's  '  finite  clod,  untroubled  by  a  spark  ', 
the  unchanging  atom  of  a  false  theory. 

But,  to  realize  the  presence  of  the  universal  in  the  indi- 
vidual (or  the  life  of  the  individual  in  the  universal,  accord- 
ing as  we  choose  to  express  the  organic  or  inherent  relation 
which  unites  them),  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  beyond  Profes- 
sor Bosanquet's  simple  instance  from  everyday  life,  the  bare 
fact  of  argument  or  discussion.  '  No  one  ever  dreams  ',  he 
says,  '  of  acting  on  the  assumption  that  a  mind  is  for  itself, 
especially  at  a  given  moment  of  time,  all  that  it  is  in  itself. 
If  this  were  the  case,  we  should  never  argue  or  persuade. 
For  to  argue  or  to  persuade  is  to  rely  on  factors  of  the  mind 
which  are  at  the  moment  not  explicit,  and  which  we  desire 
to  evoke  into  explicitness.' *  It  is  the  same  thought  which 
Plato  expresses  in  the  Meno  in  the  quasi-mythical  doctrine 
of  Reminiscence,  which,  reduced  by  himself  to  philosophical 
prose,  assures  us  that '  all  Nature  is  akin  '  and,  therefore,  for 
the  rational  mind  any  actual  knowledge  is  so  linked  with 
other  truths  as  to  be  capable  of  carrying  us  ultimately  to  the 
end  of  the  intellectual  world,  that  is,  to  the  systematic 
knowledge  of  the  whole.  Thus  any  knowledge  is  the  possi- 
bility of  all  knowledge,  or,  in  his  actual  words,  '  the  soul  can 
elicit  all  out  of  a  single  recollection,  if  a  man  is  strenuous 
and  does  not  faint '. 

All  this,  then,  is  common  ground,  and  common  also  is  (or 
appears  to  be)  the  conviction  that  in  the  making  of  souls  we 
have  the  typical  business,  or,  as  one  might  put  it,  the  central 
interest  of  the  universe.  '  The  universe ',  said  Professor 
Bosanquet  in  the  opening  lecture  of  his  first  course,  '  is  not 
a  place  of  pleasure,  nor  even  a  place  compounded  of  proba- 
tion and  justice;  it  is,  from  the  highest  point  of  view  con- 
cerned with  finite  beings,  a  place  of  soul-making.  Our  best 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  60. 


xiv    '  FORMAL  DISTINCTNESS  OF  SELVES '    261 

experience  carries  us  without  hesitation  thus  far.  ...  It  is 
the  moulding  and  the  greatness  of  souls  tha"'t  we  really  care 
for.' l  And  in  his  second  volume  the  phrase  and  the  idea 
are  made  central.  But  in  spite  of  this,  there  is  at  various 
points  in  the  book,  as  I  have  already  hinted,  something 
curiously  grudging  in  his  treatment  of  what  he  calls  '  the 
formal  distinctness  of  selves  or  souls  '.2  The  term  is  used 
always,  I  think,  with  a  tone  of  depreciation,  as  if  this  were 
a  feature  which  one  is,  indeed,  forced  to  recognize,  but  rather 
as  a  limitation  to  be  overcome  than  as  part  of  the  funda- 
mental structure  of  the  universe — what  one  might  perhaps 
term  the  fundamental  method  of  creation.  '  No  one  ',  we 
are  told,  '  would  attempt  to  overthrow  this  formal  distinct- 
ness— consisting  in  the  impossibility  that  one  finite  centre 
of  experience  should  possess,  as  its  own  immediate  experi- 
ence, the  immediate  experience  of  another.'  But  it  is  sug- 
gested that  it  '  depends  on  what  are  at  bottom  unessential 
limitations,  such  as  the  fact  of  differences  of  vital  feeling, 
depending  as  a  rule  on  the  belonging  of  different  selves  to 
different  bodies  ';  and  '  if  the  hindrance  against  two  selves 
having  the  same  immediate  experience  could  be  removed, 
the  result  involved  would  be  the  coalescence  of  the  two  selves 
into  one  '.  So,  again,  we  are  told  that  this  formal  distinct- 
ness is  '  no  doubt  inevitable  on  the  assumption  that  there  are 
to  be  finite  individuals,  because,  if  the  centres  ceased  to  have 
the  different  bases  of  feeling  that  keep  them  from  merging, 
they  would  be  one  without  distinction  and  there  would  be  no 
two  experiences  to  blend  '.  Nevertheless,  '  its  nature  seems 
not  wholly  fundamental  nor  irreducible  '.  And  later  the 
conclusion  is  reached  that  '  while  we  may  venture  to  say 
that  we  see  a  use  and  convenience  in  this  system  of  finite 
experiences  ...  we  are  aware  of  its  precarious  and  super- 

1  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  26. 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  47  (in  the  second  lecture,  where  this  grudging- 
ness  is  specially  noteworthy  throughout). 


262    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

ficial  nature '.  '  A  completer  unity  of  finite  minds  in  one 
would  bring  us  at  once  to  a  partial  Absolute,  and  necessitate 
a  transformation  of  the  differences  which  now  suffice  to 
keep  finite  minds  distinct ' ;  but  this,  it  is  indicated,  would 
not  serve  the  purposes  of  'everyday  life'.  'But,  again  (he  re- 
peats), we  are  aware  of  the  precarious  and  superficial  nature 
of  their  distinctness,  and  at  every  point  we  meet  with  indica- 
tions that  something  deeper  and  more  real  underlies  them.' 1 
The  attitude  revealed  in  such  expressions,  and  the  con- 
stantly recurring  conception  of  blending  or  merging,  as  the 
superior  ideal  or  goal,  seem  to  me  very  significant  as  bearing 
on  the  ultimate  outcome  of  a  rigidly  absolutist  theory,  and 
I  will  return  to  consider  them  in  that  reference.  But  we 
must  first,  in  justice  both  to  Professor  Bosanquet  and  to 
ourselves,  take  note  of  the  main  considerations  on  which  he 
bases  this  view  of  the  unimportance  of  the  distinctness  of 
selves  and,  as  it  would  seem,  its  progressive  disappearance. 
These  considerations  are  indicated  in  the  reference  in  the 
passage  last  quoted  to  something  deeper  and  more  real  which 
underlies  the  individual  selves.  And  in  what  has  already 
been  said  about  the  universal  in  which  the  individual  lives, 
and  from  which  he  draws  his  sustenance,  I  have  emphasized 
in  advance  my  adhesion  to  the  valuable  truth  which  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet  enforces.  What  I  deny  is  its  relevance  to 
the  suggested  view  of  finite  selfhood  as  a  vanishing  distinc- 
tion. Professor  Bosanquet's  polemic  is  directed  against  the 
tendency  to  over-emphasize  the  exclusiveness  of  the  self,  as 
if  it  were  in  the  assertion  of  its  bare  self-identity  and  differ- 
ence from  others  that  the  self  realized  its  true  being;  and  it 
is  characteristic  of  his  argument  that  he  construes  any  state- 
ment of  the  focal  difference  or  separateness  of  selves  as 
implying  the  denial  of  any  common  aims  or  common  content, 
in  short,  the  denial  of  any  common  life  in  the  whole.  And  as 
against  such  a  view  he  has  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  the 
1  Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  47,  48,  54,  58. 


xiv    SELVES  SHARE  A  COMMON  CONTENT    263 

value  of  a  self,  or,  in  his  own  phrase,  its  reality,  lies  in  its 
content,  and  that  this  depends  just  on  the  extent  to  which  it 
appropriates  a  common  heritage  of  ideas  and  interests.  The 
life  of  the  finite  individual,  as  it  builds  up  its  true  self,  is 
thus  a  continual  process  of  self-transcendence ;  its  true  per- 
sonality or  individuality  does  not  lie  in  unshareable  feelings, 
but  in  the  richness  and  variety  of  its  thoughts  and  interests. 
It  is  not  an  abstract  point  of  particularity;  it  is,  or  rather, 
it  makes  itself,  a  little  world,  a  microcosm.  But  the  con- 
tents of  such  a  self — and  every  actual  self  is  in  its  degree 
such  a  self — are  essentially  shareable.  In  social  interests 
and  purposes  the  individual  becomes  one  with  his  fellows; 
and  in  science  and  philosophy,  religion  and  art,  he  shares 
those  universal  interests  which  are  the  common  heritage  of 
humanity — which  in  the  most  literal  sense  make  us  men.  It 
is  obvious,  therefore,  that  there  must  be  an  identity  of  con- 
tent in  all  selves,  and  that  the  extent  of  this  identity  may 
vary  indefinitely  as  between  different  selves,  '  large  numbers 
of  consciousnesses  '  being  indeed,  as  he  says,  '  completely 
coincident  for  the  greater  proportion  of  their  range  ' — so 
much  so  as  to  suggest  the  difficulty  of  understanding  '  what 
was  to  be  gained  by  so  immense  a  multiplication  of  contents 
all  but  identical  '.  In  this  reference  we  may  quite  intelligibly 
talk,  'as  Professor  Bosanquet  does,  of  '  the  overlapping  of 
intelligences  ',  inasmuch  as  '  the  formal  diversity  of  finite 
centres  is  not  at  all  thoroughly  sustained  and  reinforced  by  a 
coincident  diversity  of  the  matter  of  their  experience  V  But 
to  add,  as  he  does,  that  the  formal  diversity  is  '  in  some 
degree  reacted  on  and  impaired  '  by  the  partial  identity  is,  I 
submit,  to  state  what  may  be  true  as  the  author  intends  it,  in 
a  form  which  opens  the  way  to  serious  error.  For  it  is  quite 
clear  that  the  formal  distinctness  of  selves  is  not  at  all 
'  impaired  ' — not  affected  at  all — by  the  extent  of  the  knowl- 

1  Ibid.,  p.  56.    Cf .  p.  53 :  '  Their  contents  overlap  in  the  most  irregular 
and  fluctuating  way.' 


264    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

edge  they  have  in  common,  or  of  the  sympathies  they  share. 
The  fabric  of  two  minds  may,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  has 
suggested,  be  so  nearly  identical  that  the  one  seems  to  redu- 
plicate the  other  rather  than  to  supplement  it,  and  yet  they 
remain  two  minds  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  Finite  centres 
may  '  overlap '  indefinitely  in  content,  but,  ex  vi  termini, 
they  cannot  overlap  at  all  in  existence;  their  very  raison 
d'etre  is  to  be  distinct  and,  in  that  sense,  separate  and  exclu- 
sive focalizations  of  a  common  universe. 

It  is  not  conceivable,  of  course,  that  Professor  Bosanquet 
means  to  deny  such  a  commonplace.  He  allows,  indeed,  at 
the  outset,  that  '  individuality  or  personality  has  an  aspect 
of  distinct  unshareable  immediacy,  [although]  in  substance, 
in  stuff  and  content,  it  is  universal,  communicable,  expan- 
sive '.  But  the  suggestion  of  the  argument  throughout  is 
the  unimportance  of  this  aspect.  It  may  be  a  necessary 
condition  of  finiteness,  but  finiteness,  we  are  distinctly  told, 
'  lies  in  powerlessness  ' ;  and  we  noted  how  the  expansion  of 
the  self  and  its  identification  of  itself  with  other  selves  in 
common  interests  and  movements  repeatedly  suggested  to 
the  author  the  idea  of  blending  or  merging  as  the  consum- 
mation of  the  process  of  enlargements  and  a  kind  of  emanci- 
pation from  the  de  facto  limitations  of  individuality  as  we 
know  it.  This  is  brought  out  still  more  strongly,  if  possible, 
in  the  author's  summary  of  the  lecture.  '  There  is  no  rule  as 
to  how  far  "  persons  "  can  overlap  in  their  contents.  Often 
a  little  change  of  quality  in  feeling,  it  seems,  would  all  but 
bring  them  into  one.  It  is  impotence,  and  no  mysterious 
limitation  that  keeps  them  apart.  At  their  strongest  they 
become  confluent,  and  we  see  how  they  might  be  wholly  so.' ' 

1  Ibid.,  p.  xxi  (italics  mine).  Cf.  again  in  one  of  the  summaries  of 
the  previous  volume :  '  There  would  be  no  gain  in  wiping  out  the  distinc- 
tion between  one  self  and  another  in  finite  life;  our  limitations  them- 
selves no  doubt  have  a  value.  Still,  in  principle,  our  limitations  are 
merely  de  facto ;  there  is  no  hard  barrier  set  that  can  make  our  being 
discontinuous  with  others  or  with  the  perfect  experience '  (Individuality 
and  Value,  p.  xxxi). 


xiv  '  CONFLUENCE  '  OF  SELVES  265 

The  whole  stress  is  laid,  in  this  chapter  and  again  in  Chap- 
ter IX  where  '  the  destiny  of  the  finite  self  '  is  discussed, 
upon  the  objective  and  impersonal  content  as  distinguished 
from  the  personalities  in  which  it  is  focused  or  realized. 
'  The  social  fabric  or  any  of  the  great  structures  in  which 
spiritual  achievement  takes  shape,  e.  g.  knowledge,  fine  art, 
historical  continuity  of  the  constitutional  system  of  a 
country  ' — '  solid  fabrics  '  or  *  organic  structures  '  such  as 
these — '  are  the  certain,  intelligible  and  necessary  thing ', 
the  '  something  deeper  and  more  real '  of  which  he  spoke 
as  underlying  the  '  precarious  and  superficial '  system  of 
finite  experiences.1 

My  argument  does  not  require  me  to  deny  what  is  true  in 
this  way  of  putting  the  case.  These  great  supra-individual 
creations  impress  us  all  with  a  sense  of  permanent,  or  at 
least,  of  age-long  reality.  The  structure  of  a  national  civil- 
ization and  the  traditions  which  constitute  a  nation's  life 
seem  real  in  a  sense  which  transcends  and  overshadows  the 
reality  of  any  individual  citizen  of  to-day,  or  any  of  the 
nameless  generations  of  the  past,  of  whose  lives  it  is,  as  it 
were,  the  abiding  product.  The  time  has  gone  by  when  it 
was  possible  to  speak  of  such  things  as  mere  abstractions: 
it  is  the  individual  who  is  apt  to  appear  an  abstraction  when 
set  over  against  them.  And  so  he  is  when  set  over  against 
them ;  for,  as  we  have  abundantly  seen,  it  is  only  in  them — 
as  participating  in  them — that  he  has  any  concrete  reality. 
But  if  we  are  not  to  forget  the  fundamental  structure  of  the 
world,  the  counter-stroke  must  also  be  delivered.  The  uni- 
versal is  no  less  an  abstraction,  if  it  is  taken  as  real,  or 
as  possessing  substantive  existence,  independently  of  the 
individuals  whose  living  tissue  it  is.  They  realize  them- 
selves through  it;  it  realizes  itself  in  them.  Thus  a  social 
whole  is  the  sustaining  life  of  its  individual  members,  but  it 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  53-4. 


266    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

melts  into  thin  air  if  we  try  to  treat  it  as  an  entity  apart 
from  them.  Exclusive  emphasis  on  the  one  side  or  the  other 
is  the  explanation  of  the  perennial  duel  between  individual- 
istic and  organic  theories  of  society  or  between  nominalism 
and  realism,  pluralism  and  monism,  in  the  wider  field  of 
philosophy.  Now,  although  Professor  Bosanquet  certainly 
would  not  challenge  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  concrete 
universal  just  enunciated,  the  strongly  monistic  trend  of  his 
thought  leads  him,  as  we  have  seen,  to  treat  the  individual, 
qua  individual,  almost  as  a  negligible  feature  of  the  world, 
and  in  the  issue,  consequently,  as  we  shall  see  later,  to  treat 
the  finite  self  as  a  transitory  phenomenon. 

But  this,  I  venture  to  urge,  is  entirely  to  mistake  and  to 
underrate  the  place  which  individuation  holds  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  universe,  and,  consequently,  as  I  suggested,  to  be 
untrue  to  the  position  apparently  adopted,  which  treats  soul- 
making  as  the  essential  business  of  the  universe.  It  is  no 
doubt  true,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  remarks,1  that  '  we 
cannot  expect  to  give  a  reason  for  the  scheme  of  the  uni- 
verse ' ;  but  we  ought,  at  least,  to  be  able  to  see  a  reason  or  a 
reasonableness  in  it,  if  our  philosophy  is  to  carry  us  through. 
And  to  leave  the  whole  question  of  '  why  the  finite  world 
exists '  as,  in  the  main,  a  mystery,  would  seem  to  indicate 
some  defect  in  the  conception  either  of  the  individual  or  of 
the  Absolute,  or  perhaps  of  both. 

Let  us  consider  first,  then,  what  is  meant,  or  what  we 
ought  to  mean,  by  an  individual.  I  will  start  from  an  inci- 
dental remark  of  Professor  Bosanquet's,  in  which  he  pro- 
tests against  the  phrase  '  numerical  identity  ',  commonly  used 
in  this  connexion.  In  the  sentence  I  refer  to,  he  speaks  of 
accentuating  '  the  positive  self  of  content,  at  the  expense  of 
formal  distinctness,  or  what  I  call  under  protest  numerical 
identity  '.2  If  I  understand  Professor  Bosanquet's  objection 
to  the  phrase,  I  take  his  contention  to  be  that  individuality  is 
1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  61.  '  Ibid.,  p.  287. 


xiv      THE  IDENTITY  OF  INDISCERNIBLES      267 

ultimately  a  matter  of  content,  and  that  individual  differ- 
ences, consequently,  must  be  so  explained.  Form  is  not  like 
an  empty  case  into  which  a  certain  content  may  be  put :  it  is 
the  structure  and  organization  of  the  content  itself.  Indi- 
viduals are  formally  distinct,  therefore,  not  because  a  more 
or  less  identical  content  has  been  thrust  into  so  many  empty 
cases  which  have  afterwards  had  a  numerical  label,  or  a 
proper  name,  attached  to  them  for  convenience  of  reference. 
Individuals  of  a  species  are  not  comparable  to  articles  turned 
out  by  a  machine,  each  of  which  seems  an  exact  repetition 
of  its  predecessors.  They  are  formally  distinct,  because 
they  are  really  different;  and,  no  doubt,  if  we  made  our 
analysis  fine  enough,  the  manufactured  articles  also  would 
turn  out  to  be  only  practically  and  approximately  iden- 
tical in  quality  and  structure.  For  I  accept  the  principle 
of  the  identity  of  indiscernibles  as  necessarily  true  of  all 
real  existences.  Things  are  distinguished  by  their  natures; 
they  are  different  wholes  of  content.  And  even  if  we 
make  space  and  time  the  principium  individuationis  and  try 
to  reduce  the  formal  distinctness  of  individuals  to  differ- 
ence of  position  in  the  spatio-temporal  series,  such  difference 
of  position  means  a  changed  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse, an  exposure  to  different  influences  and  a  consequent 
difference  in  the  resulting  nature.  And  space  and  time  may 
be  regarded  ultimately  as  only  a  mode  of  expressing  the 
general  fact  of  individuation — the  fact  that  there  are  finite 
centres  at  all. 

It  follows,  then,  that  every  individual  is  a  unique 
nature,  a  little  world  of  content  which,  as  to  its  ingre- 
dients, the  tempering  of  the  elements  and  the  system- 
atic structure  of  the  whole,  constitutes  an  expression  or 
focalization  of  the  universe  which  is  nowhere  exactly 
repeated.  Appearances  to  the  contrary  are  due  to  super- 
ficial observation  and  want  of  interest  in  the  object  observed. 
To  take  the  common  instance :  the  sheep  which  to  the 


268   ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

ordinary  passer-by  are  only  so  many  numerable  units,  are 
known  as  real  individuals,  by  differences  of  feature  and 
character,  to  the  shepherd  who  lives  with  his  flock  and 
enters  into  their  life.  And  the  higher  we  go  in  the  animal 
scale,  the  more  this  uniqueness  of  the  individual  life 
is  emphasized.  It  is  expressed  with  rare  beauty  and 
pathos  in  Matthew  Arnold's  lines  on  the  death  of  his  little 
dachshund : 

And  not  the  course 
Of  all  the  centuries  yet  to  come, 
And  not  the  infinite  resource 
Of  Nature,  with  her  countless  sum 

Of  figures,  with  her  fullness  vast 
Of  new  creation  evermore, 
Can  ever  quite  repeat  the  past 
Or  just  thy  little  self  restore. 

And  when  we  pass  to  man,  a  Nietzsche  may  consign  the 
masses  of  the  race  '  to  the  devil  and  statistics  ' l  as  '  blurred 
copies  on  bad  paper  and  from  worn-out  plates  ',  but  mankind, 
it  has  been  more  finely  said,  '  is  all  mass  to  the  human  eye, 
and  all  individual  to  the  divine  \2  If  not  to  Nietzsche's 
diseased  extent,  we  are  all  prone  to  something  of  the  same 
feeling.  Most  of  us,  I  fancy,  have  had  our  moods  of  depres- 
sion before  the  vast  monotony  of  human  conditions  and 
human  types,  and  have  felt  ourselves  glutted  by  nature's 
endless  fecundity.  But  that  may  be  our  mistake,  as  sug- 
gested in  the  saying  just  quoted.  It  needs,  in  fact,  only  a 
little  sympathy  and  imagination  to  see,  as  Wordsworth  says, 

into  the  depth  of  human  souls, 
Souls  that  appear  to  have  no  depth  at  all 
To  careless  eyes. 

William  James,  in  a  delightful  paper  in  his  Talks  to  Teachers, 
entitled  '  On  a  certain  Blindness  in  Human  Beings  ',  dis- 
courses, with  the  aid  of  a  famous  quotation  from  Stevenson, 

1  In  the  essay  on  History  in  his  Unseitgemasse  Betrachtungen. 

'  Mozley,  University  Sermons,  p.  121,  at  the  close  of  a  sermon  on  War. 


xiv        A  UNIQUE  WHOLE  OF  CONTENT         269 

on  our  ordinary  lack  of  this  imaginative  sympathy,  which 
makes  our  fellow-beings  mere  outsides  for  us;  and  in  his 
essay  on  Human  Immortality  he  returns  to  emphasize  the 
narrowness  and  stupidity  of  such  an  attitude,  in  particular 
the  stupidity  of  imposing  upon  the  universe  or  upon  God  our 
own  incapacity,  our  limited  sympathy  and  interest.  And,  in 
fact,  there  is  nothing  more  characteristic  of  the  religious 
attitude  that  the  sense  of  a  Divine  Companion,  whose  perfect 
comprehension  is  the  pledge  of  a  sympathy  as  perfect,  a  sym- 
pathy to  which  we  appeal  with  confidence  even  where  we 
might  hesitate  in  regard  to  those  nearest  to  us  and  most  dear. 
But  this  is  carrying  us  away  from  our  immediate  point, 
which  was  the  nature  of  the  individual  as  a  whole  of  content, 
constituting  a  unique  focalization  or  expression  of  the  Abso- 
lute, and  thus  making  its  unique  contribution  to  the  life  of 
the  whole.  The  line  of  thought  into  which  we  have  glided 
has  seemed  to  suggest  that  this  uniqueness  of  function  or 
contribution  might  carry  with  it  the  conservation  or  perma- 
nence of  the  finite  whole  as  such.  But  Professor  Bosanquet, 
although  in  objecting  to  the  phrase  numerical  identity  he 
appears  to  emphasize  the  qualitative  uniqueness  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  although  he  frequently  speaks  of  the  '  con- 
tribution '  made  by  the  finite  self  to  ultimate  reality  (it  is 
indeed  one  of  his  favourite  expressions),  seems  constantly 
to  imply  that  this  is  to  be  conceived  as  the  contribution  of 
an  '  element '  or  quality,  some  peculiar  flavour  or  tang,  to 
a  universal  experience — not  as  consisting  in  its  own  total 
living  reality  as  a  specific  incarnation,  a  centre  into  which  the 
Absolute  has  poured  its  own  being.  And  it  is  in  accordance 
with  this  view  that  the  finite  individual  is  represented  as 
yielding  its  contribution  like  a  perfume  exhaled  in  the  very 
dissolution  of  its  private  being. 

Odours,  when  sweet  violets  sicken, 
Live  within  the  sense  they  quicken. 
This  is  clearly  stated  in  an  important  new  chapter  in  the 


270   ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

second  edition  of  his  Logic,1  which  is  in  the  nature  of  a 
reply  to  criticisms  by  Professor  Stout  and  Professor  Taylor. 
It  is  true  that  the  statement  to  which  I  refer  is  made  of  the 
animal  mind,  but  animal  minds  are  expressly  taken  as  '  an 
extreme  case  '  of  *  the  imperfect  individual '  in  general,  that 
is  to  say,  of  '  all  finite  individuals  ' ;  and  what  is  said  of  the 
dog  applies  in  principle  to  every  finite  subject.  '  No  one  who 
has  loved  a  dog  ',2  says  Professor  Bosanquet,  '  can  doubt 
that  its  mind  has  a  value  of  the  same  kind,  if  remotely  the 
same,  as  his  own.  No  one,  on  the  other  hand,  can  well 
suppose  that  it  has  the  distinctness  and  organization  of 
content  which  we  should  expect  of  anything  that  is  to  have 
a  permanent  place  of  its  own  as  a  separate  member  of  the 
system  of  reality.  Surely  the  solution  must  be  of  the  general 
type  which  conceives  this  partial  mind  as  contributing  a 
character,  some  intensification  of  loyalty  and  affection,  to 
some  greater  existence,  and  not  claiming  in  itself  to  be  a 
unique  differentiation  of  the  real.'  It  is,  no  doubt,  in  the 
light  of  such  phrases  here  as  '  a  separate  member  ',  '  a  unique 
differentiation  ',  that  one  must  understand  the  pointed  re- 
fusal made  twice  over,  in  the  chapter  on  '  the  destiny  of  the 
finite  self  ',  to  entertain  the  term  '  member  '  in  reference  to 
such  selves.  '  The  finite  self  [he  says  there  in  the  text],  like 
everything  else  in  the  universe,  is  now  and  here  beyond 
escape  an  element  in  the  Absolute  ' — to  which  we  have  the 
foot-note  : '  I  do  not  say  "  a  member  of  "  the  Absolute.  Such 
an  expression  might  imply  that  it  is,  separately  and  with 
relative  independence,  a  standing  differentiation  of  the 
Absolute.'  And  again,  a  propos  of  the  same  point,  we  have 
another  note,  fourteen  pages  later,  in  which  the  same  dis- 
tinction is  punctiliously  reasserted :  '  We  are  sure,  to  begin 
with,  of  our  eternal  reality  as  an  element— I  do  not  say  a 
member — in  the  Absolute.'  And  it  is  in  harmony  with  the 

1  The  chapter  on  '  The  Theory  of  Judgment  in  relation  to  Absolutism  '. 
1  Logic,  2nd  ed.,  vol.  ii,  p.  259. 


xiv  MEMBER  OR  ELEMENT?  271 

spirit  of  the  distinction  that  the  conclusion  of  the  chapter 
offers  us  '  the  eternal  reality  of  the  Absolute  as  that  realiza- 
tion of  our  self  which  we  instinctively  demand  and  desire  V 

We  are  not  at  present  discussing  the  specific  problem  of 
human  immortality,  although  the  argument  may  have  im- 
portant bearings  on  such  a  question.  What  I  wish  to  chal- 
lenge is  Professor  Bosanquet's  whole  view  of  the  self  or  the 
finite  individual — a  view  which  is  brought  to  a  point  in  such 
a  distinction  as  I  have  just  quoted  (between  '  member  '  and 
'element '),  but  which  runs  from  end  to  end  of  his  system 
and  determines  its  whole  structure.  The  too  exclusive 
monism  of  the  system  depends,  it  seems  to  me,  on  a  defective 
idea  of  what  is  meant  by  a  self  or  by  the  fact  of  individua- 
tion  in  general.  If  one  were  inclined  to  put  it  strongly,  one 
might  almost  say  that  Professor  Bosanquet's  theory  does 
not  contain  the  idea  of  self  at  all :  the  world  is  dissolved  into 
a  collection  of  qualities  or  adjectives  which  are  ultimately 
housed  in  the  Absolute.  And  again,  just  because  of  the 
failure  to  appreciate  the  meaning  of  finite  selfhood,  it  is 
difficult  to  say  whether  even  the  Absolute  is  to  be  regarded 
as  a  self  or  not — that  is  to  say,  whether  what  is  called  the 
absolute  experience  possesses  the  centrality  or  focalized 
unity  which  is  the  essential  characteristic  of  a  self,  and,  in 
its  degree,  we  may  say,  of  everything  that  is  real. 

The  doctrine  of  the  one  perfect  individual  is,  of  course, 
the  overt  thesis  of  Professor  Bosanquet's  first  Gifford 
volume  on  '  Individuality  and  Value ' ;  but  the  founda- 
tions on  which  the  argument  rests  are  more  clearly  ex- 
posed in  the  chapter  of  the  Logic  to  which  I  have  already 
referred.  It  is  there  quite  unequivocally  stated,  in  con- 
nexion with  the  theory  of  the  judgement,  that  the  only 
ultimate  subject  of  predication  is  '  the  one  true  individual 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  chap,  ix,  pp.  258,  272,  288.  So  again  in  the  sum- 
mary of  the  same  chapter  (p.  xxxi)  the  conclusion  is  suggested  that  '  it 
is  rather  a  personality  than  our  personality  that  is  essential '. 


272    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

Real ',  all  finite  individuals  being  '  in  ultimate  analysis 
connexions  of  content  within  the  real  individual  to  which 
they  belong ',  and  of  which  they  are  therefore  '  ultimately 
predicates  V  Here  we  come,  I  think,  definitely  to  the  part- 
ing of  the  ways,  and  yet,  in  reading  Professor  Bosanquet's 
chapter,  one  has  the  hopeless  kind  of  feeling  which  so  often 
oppresses  us  in  philosophical  controversy — a  sense  of  despair 
at  seeing  the  one  party  accumulating  proofs,  and  reiterating 
assertions,  of  what  it  has  never  occurred  to  the  other  to  deny. 
The  question  is  whether  finite  individuals  possess  a  substan- 
tive or  an  adjectival  mode  of  being — whether,  that  is  to  say, 
they  must  be  taken  as  substances  in  the  Aristotelian  sense  of 
TipcoTrj  ovaia,  that  which  cannot  stand  in  a  judgement  as 
predicate  or  attribute  of  anything  else,  the  individual  thing 
or  being,  in  short,  of  which  we  predicate  the  universals 
which  constitute  its  nature.  But  what  Professor  Bosanquet 
elaborately  contends  is  that  the  finite  individual  is  not  a 
substance  in  the  Spinozistic  sense,  not  '  wholly  independent 
and  self-subsistent ',  not  a  '  true  individual ',  not,  in  short, 
the  Absolute.  And,  of  course,  as  Locke  said  in  a  similar 
connexion,  '  it  is  but  defining  substance  in  that  way  and  the 
business  is  done  '.  Taking  substance  in  this  sense,  Professor 
Bosanquet  naturally  finds  it  '  quite  astonishing  that  an 
appeal  in  favour  of  a  doctrine  of  independent  substances 
should  be  made  on  the  ground  of  our  experience  of  our- 
selves '.  That  experience  seems  to  him,  on  the  contrary,  '  of 
all  things  the  most  fatal '  to  such  a  doctrine.  '  What  all 
great  masters  of  life  have  felt  this  [experience]  to  reveal  has 
been  a  seeking  on  the  part  of  the  self  for  its  own  reality, 
which  carries  it  into  something  beyond.' 2  But  the  misun- 
derstanding is  almost  wilful,  for  the  appeal  to  which  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet  is  replying  is  not  to  the  self  as  complete 
and  self-explaining,  but  expressly  to  '  the  unique  individu- 
ality of  the  self  as  a  centre  of  immediate  experience  '.  Its 
1  Logic,  vol.  ii,  pp.  258-9  (italics  mine).  'Ibid.,  pp.  254-5. 


xiv  ARISTOTLE  AND  SPINOZA  273 

edges  may  be  as  ragged  as  you  please;  our  experience  may, 
as  it  does,  carry  us  on  all  sides  beyond  ourselves  till  we  bring 
in  the  whole  context  of  the  universe.  But,  as  Mr.  Bradley 
himself  testifies  : '  My  way  of  contact  with  Reality  is  through 
a  limited  aperture.  For  I  cannot  get  at  it  directly  except 
through  the  felt  this.  .  .  .  Everything  beyond,  though  not 
less  real,  is  an  expansion  of  the  common  essence  which  we 
feel  burningly  in  this  one  focus.  And  so,  in  the  end,  to  know 
the  universe,  we  must  fall  back  upon  our  personal  experi- 
ence and  sensation.' 1  Of  course,  as  he  proceeds  to  explain, 
this  does  not  mean  that  we  start  with  an  Ego  conscious  of  its 
own  states ;  it  does  not  mean  that  we  start  with  an  idea  of  the 
Ego  at  all,  for  such  a  consciousness  is  admittedly  a  later 
growth  of  reflective  interpretation.  What  it  affirms  is  simply 
the  fact  on  which  developed  selfhood  is  based — the  fact  that 
experience  takes  place  in  finite  centres,  and  that  all  construc- 
tion, all  knowledge,  rests  on  the  basis  of  what  Mr.  Bradley 
calls  '  the  this  and  the  mine  '.2  Such  presentation,  he  says, 
'  is  the  one  source  of  our  experience,  and  every  element  of 
the  world  must  submit  to  pass  through  it.  ...  The  "  this  " 
is  real  for  us  in  a  sense  in  which  nothing  else  is  real.' 3 

If  we  now  ask  how  it  is  that  Mr.  Bradley,  in  spite  of  his 
emphasis  on  the  fact  of  individual  subjects  as  separate  * 
centres  of  immediate  experience,  proceeds  nevertheless,  in 
his  favourite  phrase,  to  '  merge  '  these  subjects,  and  to  treat 
them  as  adjectives  of  the  one  Reality,  which  he  makes  the 

1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  260. 

2  Cf.  Professor  Stout,  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  1902-3, 
p.  19:  'The  consciousness  of  self  is  a  complex  product  of  mental  devel- 
opment, and  even  in  its  simplest  phases  it  always  includes  a  reference 
beyond  immediate  experience.  All  that  we  are  justified  in  affirming  is 
that  the  primary  psychical  reference  implicit  in  all  judgement  is  the 
ultimate  point  of  departure  of  the  growth  of  self-consciousness,  and 
that  it  always  continues  to  be  its  essential  basis  and  presupposition.' 

"Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  225. 

4  '  They  are  considered,  in  some  sense,  to  own  an  exclusive  character. 
And  that  this  character,  in  part,  is  exclusive  cannot  be  denied'  (ibid., 
p.  227). 


274    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

ultimate  subject  of  all  predication,  the  only  intelligible 
answer  seems  to  be  that  the  assertion  is  intended  as  a  denial 
of  a  final  and  unmediated  pluralism,  i.  e.  of  the  doctrine  of 
ultimately  self-subsistent,  independent  and  unrelated  reals. 
The  best  insight  into  a  writer's  meaning  is  often  gained  by 
considering  what  he  is  attacking  or,  to  put  it  more  precisely, 
his  conception  of  the  alternative  to  his  own  point  of  view. 
Now  both  Mr.  Bradley  and  Professor  Bosanquet  appear  to 
assume  that  such  a  pluralism  is  the  only  alternative  to  their 
own  position.  We  have  seen  how  this  runs  through  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet's  statement.  In  almost  identical  terms, 
Mr.  Bradley  tells  us  that  every  finite  fact  is  '  infected  with 
relativity  ' — it  is  '  given  as  existing  by  reference  to  some- 
thing else  '.  '  It  is  adjectival  on  what  is  beyond  itself.' 1 
But  such  a  use  of  the  word  adjectival,  though  intelligible, 
and  perhaps  forcible,  is  none  the  less  confessedly  metaphori- 
cal. Things  are  not  adjectives  of  one  another.  A  shoe  is 
not  an  attribute  of  a  foot,  and  a  son  is  not  an  attribute  of  his 
father,  though  in  both  cases  the  one  fact  transcends  itself, 
and  carries  you  to  the  other.  Reduced  to  plain  prose  and 
ordinary  English  usage,  the  '  adjectival '  theory  of  the  finite 
is  simply  the  denial  of  unrelated  reals;  and,  so  understood, 
I  at  least  should  have  no  quarrel  with  it.  If  no  finite  fact 
can  either  exist  or  be  understood  by  itself,  then  the  true  view 
of  Reality  must  be  that  which  conceives  the  universe  as  an 
inclusive  system  of  interrelated  facts  which,  as  so  included 
and  interrelated,  are  to  be  regarded  as  constituent  members 
of  a  single  whole.  This  is  the  conception  suggested  by 
Professor  Bosanquet's  doctrine  of  the  disjunctive  judgement 
as  the  complete  or  perfect  form  to  which  the  categorical  and 
the  hypothetical  forms  lead  up.  As  readers  of  his  Logic  will 
recall,  the  disjunctive  judgement,  so  interpreted,  means  not 
the  bare  '  either-or  '  of  formal  logic,  but  the  system  of  subor- 
dinate and  mutually  exclusive  forms  into  which  any  given 
1  Principles  of  Logic,  pp.  70-1. 


xiv   ADJECTIVAL  THEORY  OF  THE  FINITE   275 

whole  differentiates  itself.  And,  in  point  of  fact,  we  find 
him,  in  the  course  of  the  present  discussion,  repeatedly  em- 
ploying such  expressions  as  '  members  of  a  system  ',  '  mem- 
bers within  a  whole ',  '  membership  within  a  concrete 
universal ',  to  cover  the  meaning  formerly  conveyed  by  the 
terms  adjective  and  predicate,  while  still  pertinaciously 
maintaining  the  formal  point  that  such  members  are  logically 
to  be  regarded  as  predicates  of  the  whole.1 

It  might  seem,  therefore,  as  if  it  became  merely  a  verbal 
question  whether  we  are  to  speak  of  an  individual  as  a 
member  or  as  a  predicate  of  the  Absolute.  But  unless  there 
is  some  real  distinction,  how  are  we  to  account  for  Professor 
Bosanquet's  punctilious  and  repeated  rejection,  in  his 
Gifford  volume,  of  the  term  '  members  of  the  Absolute  '  as 
applied  to  finite  selves  ?  The  rejection  is,  of  course,  verbally 
inconsistent  with  the  phrases  just  quoted  from  the  Logic, 
and  one  passage,  at  least,  might  be  quoted  from  the  Gifford 
volume  itself z  in  which  the  term  '  membership '  occurs. 
But,  even  if  not  consistently  adhered  to,  the  fact  of  the 
deliberate  rejection  of  the  one  term  implies  that,  when  taken 
in  bitter  earnest  (to  use  a  favourite  phrase  of  his  own),  the 
idea  of  membership  suggests  another  conception  of  the 
nature  and  function  of  individuation  than  that  which  domi- 
nates Mr.  Bradley's  and  Professor  Bosanquet's  metaphysics. 
In  the  next  lecture  I  shall  try  to  indicate  what  I  take  the 
difference  between  the  two  conceptions  to  be. 

1  Cf.  Logic,  2nd  ed.,  vol.  ii,  p.  257. 

2  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  204.    There  is  a  more  important  passage  which 
I  have  since  discovered,  in  which,  speaking  of  '  the  part ',  he  says  :  '  it  is, 
in  truth,  more  than  a  part,  it  is  a  member  or  an  aspect '.    This  occurs 
(p.  298)  in  the  fine  concluding  chapter  of  the  same  volume,  '  The  Gates 
of  the  Future ',  and  indicates  at  any  rate  a  change  of  emphasis. 


LECTURE  XV 

THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE  FINITE  INDIVIDUAL 

(Continued) 

I  HAVE  dwelt  at  some  length  in  the  preceding  lecture  on 
Professor  Bosanquet's  tendency  to  rebel  against  what  he 
called  the  '  formal  distinctness '  of  finite  selves,  and  I 
cannot  help  finding  a  similar  significance  in  the  admission,  so 
curiously  recurrent  in  Mr.  Bradley,  of  the  '  inexplicability ' 
of  the  finite  individual.  '  That  experience  should  take  place 
in  finite  centres,  and  should  wear  the  form  of  finite  "  this- 
ness  ",  is  in  the  end  inexplicable.'  Again,  '  Why  there  are 
finite  appearances,  and  why  appearances  of  such  varied 
kinds,  are  questions  not  to  be  answered ; '  and,  once  more, 
in  the  closing  pages,  '  We  do  not  know  why  or  how  the 
Absolute  divides  itself  into  centres,  or  the  way  in  which,  so 
divided,  it  still  remains  one.' 1  And  I  quoted  in  the  last 
lecture  a  passage  from  Professor  Bosanquet  in  which  he 
refers  in  the  same  spirit  to  the  question  '  why  the  finite 
world  exists ',  dismissing  it  with  the  remark  that  '  we  can- 
not expect  to  give  a  reason  for  the  scheme  of  the  universe  '. 
It  would  seem,  then,  as  if  the  unity  with  which  the  system 
concludes  tends  to  abolish  the  plurality  of  centres  from 
which  it  starts.  Their  individual  and,  so  far,  separate 
existence  cannot,  of  course,  be  denied  as  a  fact  of  experi- 
ence ;  but  it  is  represented  as  '  appearance  '  or  illusion,  due  to 
the  impotence  of  our  finite  point  of  view,  and  quite  unreal 
'  from  the  side  of  the  Absolute  '.  '  It  may  be  instructive  ', 
says  Mr.  Bradley,  '  to  consider  the  question  [of  souls]  from 
the  side  of  the  Absolute.  We  might  be  tempted  to  conclude 
that  these  souls  are  the  Reality,  or  at  least  must  be  real. 
1  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  226,  511,  527. 


xv  APPEARANCE  AND  MERE  APPEARANCE  277 

But  that  conclusion  would  be  false,  for  the  souls  would  fall 
within  the  realm  of  appearance  and  error.  They  would 
be,  but,  as  such,  they  would  not  have  reality.  They  would 
require  a  resolution  and  a  recomposition,  in  which  their 
individualities  would  be  transmuted  and  absorbed.  The 
plurality  of  souls  in  the  Absolute  is,  therefore,  appearance, 
and  their  existence  is  not  genuine.  .  .  .  To  gain  consist- 
ency and  truth  it  must  be  merged,  and  recomposed  in  a 
result  in  which  its  specialty  must  vanish.' l  '  Taken  together 
in  the  whole,'  he  says  again  in  his  final  chapter,  '  appear- 
ances, as  such,  cease.' 2  The  equivocation  here  and  else- 
where between  appearance  and  mere  appearance  or  illusion 
(the  unconscious  passage,  I  mean,  from  the  one  to  the  other) 
is,  I  venture  to  think,  characteristic  of  Mr.  Bradley's  whole 
position;  but,  applied  in  this  way  to  the  existences  which 
form  the  necessary  starting-point  of  the  whole  speculation, 
it  clearly  involves  a  circle  in  the  reasoning.  There  cannot 
be  illusion  or  mere  appearance,  unless  souls  or  finite  selves 
really  exist  as  such,  to  be  the  seats  or  victims  of  this  illu- 
sion. The  plurality  of  finite  centres  is,  therefore,  a  true 
appearance;  that  is  to  say,  the  Absolute  really  does  appear, 
or  differentiate  itself,  in  that  way.3  One  might  infer  from 
Mr.  Bradley's  account  that  the  Absolute  had  no  cognizance, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  existence  of  finite  centres  at  all,  in  its 
'  single  and  all-absorbing  experience  '.4  What  I  wish  to 
contend,  on  the  contrary,  is  that  the  existence  of  such 
centres  is  a  fact  as  true  and  important  '  from  the  side  of 
the  Absolute  '  as  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  finite  beings 
themselves — nay,  that  this  differentiation  or  creation  (ac- 
cording as  we  name  it)  constitutes  the  very  essence  and 
open  secret  of  the  Absolute  Life. 

This   is  apparently  implied,   as   we  saw  at  the   outset, 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  304-6.  2  Ibid.,  p.  511. 

*  Cf.   Professor   Stout's  argument,   Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian 
Society,  1902-3,  p.  28.  * Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  272. 


278    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

in  Professor  Bosanquet's  emphatic  description  of  the  uni- 
verse as  a  place  of  soul-making.  But  on  looking  more 
closely  at  his  language,  a  qualification  may  be  noted,  which 
at  first  is  apt  to  pass  unobserved.  '  The  universe  ',  he  says, 
4  is  not  a  place  of  pleasure  ...  it  is,  from  the  highest  point 
of  view  concerned  with  finite  beings,  a  place  of  soul-making.' 
I  confess  that  it  was  a  long  time  before  the  insertion  of  the 
proviso  which  I  have  italicized  struck  me  as  a  significant 
limitation  of  the  general  statement.  But  I  observe  that  it  is 
carefully  repeated  in  the  summary  of  Lecture  III  of  the 
second  course,  where  the  moulding  of  souls  is  described  as 
'  the  main  work  of  the  universe  as  finite  ' ,  One  is  forced  to 
conclude,  therefore,  that  the  qualification  is  important  in 
Professor  Bosanquet's  own  eyes;  and  it  is  perhaps  worth 
noting  that  in  the  second  instance  the  phrase  occurs  after 
the  mention  of  the  passage  from  Keats.  '  Keats's  sugges- 
tion ',  says  Professor  Bosanquet,  '  is  expressed  so  as  to 
imply  the  pre-existence  of  something  to  be  developed  into 
souls,  and  a  survival  of  souls  in  a  further  life  after  being 
moulded  in  this  life.  Accepting  the  conservation  of  all 
values  in  the  absolute,  I  do  not  think  these  special  assump- 
tions necessary.  But  the  view  that  the  moulding  of  souls  is 
the  main  work  of  the  universe  as  finite  seems  to  contain  an 
unquestionable  truth.'  This  seems  to  imply  that  ultimately, 
or  for  the  Absolute,  the  moulding  of  souls  does  not  possess 
the  central  value  or  importance  which  is  attributed  to  it 
from  the  finite  point  of  view.  Unless  the  souls  are  conserved 
as  souls,  it  is  hardly  intelligible  to  speak  of  their  moulding 
as  in  any  sense  the  end  or  meaning  of  the  world-process. 
But  the  whole  drift  of  the  two  volumes  is  against  the  idea 
of  individual  survival;  'values'  survive  in  the  Absolute, 
but  not  persons.  '  The  destiny  or  conservation  of  particu- 
lar centres  ',  he  tells  us  in  his  opening  lecture,  '  is  not  what 
primarily  has  value;  what  has  value  is  the  contribution 
which  the  particular  centre — a  representative  of  certain 


xv     PROFESSOR  ROYCE'S  PARABLE     279 

elements  in  the  whole — brings  to  the  whole  in  which  it  is 
a  member.' 

This  idea  of  '  contribution ',  as  we  have  seen,  runs 
through  Professor  Bosanquet's  treatment,  and  it  is  an 
attractive  idea,  and  true  if  rightly  understood.  But  what 
if  our  contribution  to  the  Absolute  just  lay  in  being  our- 
self,  our  particular,  imperfect,  but  developing,  self,  the 
unique  individual  whom  it  has  taken  such  pains  to  fashion? 
The  contribution  cannot  lie  in  any  of  the  qualities  of  the 
individual  taken  separately,  for  these  are  all  universals, 
and  as  such  must  be  already  fully  represented  in  the  perfect 
experience  of  the  Absolute.  The  uselessness  of  such  con- 
tributions from  the  side  of  the  finite  is  aptly  symbolized 
in  the  beautiful  but  strangely  heartless  parable  with  which 
Professor  Royce  closed  his  first  exposition  of  the  Absolute 
philosophy.  '  At  worst ',  he  says,  '  we  are  like  a  child 
who  has  come  to  the  palace  of  the  King  on  the  day  of  his 
wedding,  bearing  roses  as  a  gift  to  grace  the  feast.  For  the 
child,  waiting  innocently  to  see  whether  the  King  will  not 
appear  and  praise  the  welcome  flowers,  grows  at  last  weary 
with  watching  all  day  and  with  listening  to  harsh  words 
outside  the  palace  gate,  amid  the  jostling  crowd.  And  so 
in  the  evening  it  falls  fast  asleep  beneath  the  great  dark 
walls,  unseen  and  forgotten;  and  the  withering  roses  by 
and  by  fall  from  its  lap,  and  are  scattered  by  the  wind 
into  the  dusty  highway,  there  to  be  trodden  under  foot  and 
destroyed.  Yet  all  that  happens  only  because  there  are 
infinitely  fairer  treasures  within  the  palace  than  the  ignorant 
child  could  bring.  The  King  knows  of  this,  yes,  and  of  ten 
thousand  other  proffered  gifts  of  loyal  subjects.  But  he 
needs  them  not.  Rather  are  all  things  from  eternity  his 
own.' *  Professor  Royce  has  moved  since  then,  and  in  his 
Gifford  Lectures  in  this  University z  he  has  expounded  a 

1  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  483. 

2  The  World  and  the  Individual. 


280    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

very  different  view  of  the  place  and  destiny  of  the  finite 
self  in  the  Absolute  life,  and  his  later  view  is  founded, 
I  think  I  may  say,  just  on  the  uniqueness  of  meaning  or 
purpose  in  each  individual  life.  To  adopt  the  style  of  his 
own  parable,  it  is  not  flowers,  gifts  out  of  the  common 
stock  of  nature,  which  the  child  brings  to  the  King,  but 
the  gift  of  himself,  an  offering  which  only  he  can  make, 
and  which,  we  would  fain  believe,  is  precious,  as  nothing 
else  can  be,  in  the  eyes  of  the  King. 

But  all  the  metaphors  in  which  Mr.  Bradley  so  abounds, 
expressive  of  the  blending  and  merging  of  finite  selves  in  the 
Absolute,  depend  on  the  assumption  that  the  selves,  as  such, 
in  their  finite  integrity,  if  one  may  so  speak,  possess  no  value 
for  the  Absolute.  In  the  final  chapter  of  Appearance  and 
Reality,  Mr.  Bradley  has  occasion  to  consider  a  view  which 
*  suggests  ',  he  says,  '  that  in  the  Absolute  finite  centres  are 
maintained  and  respected,  and  that  we  may  consider  them, 
as  such,  to  persist  and  to  be  merely  ordered  and  arranged  '. 
'  But  not  like  this  ',  he  proceeds,1  '  is  the  final  destiny  and 
last  truth  of  things.  We  have  a  re-arrangement  not  merely 
of  things  but  of  their  internal  elements.  We  have  an  all- 
pervasive  transfusion  with  a  re-blending  of  all  material. 
And  we  can  hardly  say  that  the  Absolute  consists  of  finite 
things,  when  the  things,  as  such,  are  there  transmuted  and 
have  lost  their  individual  natures.'  Professor  Bosanquet  is 
not  so  copious  in  his  metaphors  or  so  peremptory  in  his  way 
of  putting  the  case ;  but  his  view  of  '  the  final  destiny  and 
last  truth  of  things  ',  as  we  have  already  partly  seen,  is,  in  all 
essentials,  the  same.  He  also  tells  us  that  the  content  of  the 
imperfect  individual  has  to  be  '  transmuted  and  re-arranged  ',2 
the  result  being  '  the  contribution  of  some  modifying  ele- 
ment to  the  experiences  which  come  together  in  the  Abso- 
lute '.3  And,  as  Mr.  Bradley  talks  of  the  finite  self  as  being 

Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  529.  *  Logic,  2nd  ed.,  vol.  ii,  p.  258. 

*  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  259. 


xv  MR.  BRADLEY'S  METAPHORS  281 

'  embraced  and  harmonized '  in  the  Absolute  through  its  being 
'  suppressed  as  such  ',  so  Professor  Bosanquet  speaks  of 
'  the  expansion  and  absorption  of  the  self  V  With  more 
audacious  irony  Mr.  Bradley  speaks  of  the  perfection  and 
harmony  which  the  individual  attains  in  the  Absolute  as 
'  the  complete  gift  and  dissipation  of  his  personality '  in 
which  '  he,  as  such,  must  vanish  '.  '  The  finite,  as  such, 
disappears  in  being  accomplished.' 2  And  again,  '  the  proc- 
ess of  correction  '  which  finite  existence  undergoes  in  the 
Absolute  may  '  entirely  dissipate  its  nature  '.  '  Transmuted  ' 
is  the  word  most  favoured  by  both ;  but  synonyms  plentifully 
scattered  through  Appearance  and  Reality  are  '  merged  ', 
'  blended  ',  '  fused  ',  '  absorbed  ',  '  run  together  ',  '  trans- 
formed ',  '  dissolved  in  a  higher  unity  ',  and  even  the  more 
sinister  terms  '  suppressed  ',  '  destroyed  ',  and  '  lost '. 

Mr.  Bradley's  famous  metaphor  of  the  window-frames 
as  expressing  the  condition  of  finite  selfhood  significantly 
indicates  his  conception  of  the  process  and  its  final  consum- 
mation. '  My  incapacity  to  extend  the  boundary  of  my 
"  this  ",  my  inability  to  gain  an  immediate  experience  of 
that  in  which  it  is  subordinated  and  reduced — is  my  mere 
imperfection.  Because  I  cannot  spread  out  my  window  until 
all  is  transparent,  and  all  windows  disappear,  this  does  not 
justify  me  in  insisting  on  my  window-frame's  rigidity.  For 
that  frame  has,  as  such,  no  existence  in  reality,  but  only  in 
our  impotence.  .  .  .  There  is  no  objection  against  the  disap- 
pearance of  limited  transparencies  in  an  all-embracing  clear- 
ness.' 3  The  Absolute  is,  in  short,  '  a  whole  in  which  all 
finites  blend  and  are  resolved  '.4  And  in  Professor  Bosan- 
quet's  account,  it  seems  to  be  through  some  such  conception 
of  the  disappearance  of  the  finite  selves,  as  such,  and  the 
'  re-distribution  '  or  '  re-adjustment ' 5  of  their  material  in 

1  Ibid.,  p.  263.  *  Appearance  and  Reality,  pp.  419-20. 

"Ibid.,  pp.  253-4  (italics  mine).  *  Ibid.,  p.  429. 

5  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  xxix, 


282    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

the  perfect  experience,  that  evil,  which  is  said  to  be  simply 
good  in  the  wrong  place,  disappears,  as  such,  in  the  Abso- 
lute. The  contents  or  qualities  of  the  different  selves  are,  as 
it  were,  shaken  up  together,  and  neutralize  and  supplement 
one  another.  The  metaphor  is  Professor  Bosanquet's  own. 
'  How  constantly  we  hear  it  said,'  he  writes,  '  "  They  will  do 
capital  work  together;  A's  failing  will  counteract  B's,"  or 
"  if  A  and  B  could  be  shaken  up  in  a  bag  together,  they 
would  make  a  perfect  man."  The  Absolute  is  a  limiting  case 
of  such  a  process.' 1  But  if  such  an  '  all-pervasive  transfu- 
sion '  (to  go  back  to  Mr.  Bradley's  phrase)  is  the  goal  or, 
more  strictly,  the  eternal  reality  which  only  our  impotence 
disguises  from  us,  then  certainly  we  need  not  wonder  that 
the  existence  of  finite  centres  at  all  seems  on  the  theory 
inexplicable  and,  one  might  even  say,  uncalled  for.  Why 
should  the  blessed  harmony  of  the  perfect  experience  be 
disturbed  even  in  appearance  ? 

But,  in  fact,  the  whole  conception  of  blending  and  merg- 
ing, as  applied  to  finite  individuals,  depends  on  the  failure 
to  recognize  that  every  real  individual  must  possess  a 
substantive  existence  in  the  Aristotelian  sense.  Both  Mr. 
Bradley  and  Professor  Bosanquet,  as  we  saw  in  the  preced- 
ing lecture,  insist  on  taking  the  individual  as  an  adjective, 
thereby  reducing  it  to  a  conflux  of  universals  or  qualities. 
But  it  is  a  trite  observation  that  no  number  of  abstract 
universals  flocking  together  can  give  you  the  concretely 
existing  individual.  To  exist  means  to  be  the  subject  of 
qualities,  to  have  or  possess  a  nature.  This  is  recognized 
in  the  current  distinction  between  existence  and  content, 
between  the  '  that '  and  the  '  what '.  And  although,  as  we 
have  already  partly  seen  in  another  connexion,2  this  is  a 
distinction  which  easily  lends  itself  to  erroneous  statement, 
we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  a  counter-error.  It  is 
certain  that  the  '  that '  of  a  thing,  the  substantive  in  it,  is 

1  Volue  and  Destiny,  p.  217.  '  In  Lecture  IX, 


xv  THE  CONCRETE  INDIVIDUAL  283 

not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  solid  core  of  being,  a  grain,  as  it 
were,  of  reality-stuff,1  to  which,  as  a  support,  the  qualities 
are  attached.  It  cannot  be  taken  out  and  exhibited  as  some- 
thing over  and  above  the  qualities.  But  reaction  from 
such  errors  easily  leads  to  an  exclusive  stress  on  the  content 
or  nature  as  constituting  and  differentiating  the  individuals. 
Here  again,  it  will  be  remembered,  we  have  acknowledged 
the  truth  which  lies  in  such  a  mode  of  statement.  Individu- 
als, it  may  be  quite  truly  said,  are  ultimately  differentiated  by 
their  nature,  that  is  to  say,  by  their  specific  content,  includ- 
ing therein,  of  course,  the  peculiar  arrangement  or  make-up 
of  the  content — what  we  may  call  its  peculiar  organization 
or  system.  But  this  way  of  stating  the  case  is  true  only 
so  long  as  it  does  not  obscure  the  fact  that  we  are  dealing,  in 
each  case,  with  a  concrete  existent.  There  is  a  subtle  danger 
in  the  term  content — a  suggestion  that  the  individual  is 
simply  a  very  complex  group  of  universals.  But  if,  as  we 
are  agreed,  the  individual  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  put 
together,  so  to  speak,  out  of  the  abstract  universal,  in  the 
shape  of  so  many  qualities,  and  the  abstract  particular  in  the 
shape  of  a  point  of  existence,  neither  can  it  be  regarded  as 
simply  an  intricately  mingled  group  of  universals — a  highly 
complex  adjective.  So  to  think  of  it  is  to  confound  the 
abstractions  of  knowledge  with  the  concrete  texture  of 
reality;  it  is  entirely  to  overlook  the  unity  and  centrality 
which  is  the  characteristic  of  concrete  existence,  and  is  what 
we  mean  by  individuation.  Such  centrality  is  acknowl- 
edged by  our  authors  in  the  phrase  '  finite  centres  '.  But 
we  have  seen  how  '  precarious  and  superficial '  Professor 
Bosanquet  pronounces  such  formal  distinctness  to  be.  And 
when  the  whole  stress  is  laid  on  content,  the  content  comes 
to  be  regarded  as  somehow  detachable  from  the  centres,  and 
capable  of  being  re-arranged  and  finally  shaken  up  into 
perfect  harmony  in  the  Absolute.  As  Mr.  Bradley  puts  it : 
1  Lotze's  phrase.  Cf.  his  Metaphysic,  Book  I,  chap,  iii,  section  31. 


284    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

'  We  found  no  reason  why  such  feelings,  considered  in  any 
feature  or  aspect,  should  persist  self-centred  and  aloof.  It 
seemed  possible,  to  say  the  least,  that  they  all  might  blend 
with  one  another,  and  be  merged  in  the  experience  of  the  one 
Reality.  And  with  that  possibility,  given  on  all  sides,  we 
arrive  at  our  conclusion.  The  "  this  "  and  "  mine  "  are 
now  absorbed  as  elements  within  our  Absolute.' 1 

But  such  a  conception  does  no  more  justice  to  the  sub- 
stantive unity  of  every  existent  than  did  the  old  associa- 
tionist  dissolution  of  the  self  into  atomic  states  or  ideas,  the 
doctrine  which  Mr.  Bradley  himself  so  mercilessly  carica- 
tured in  his  Ethical  Studies.  l  Mr.  Bain  collects  that  the 
mind  is  a  collection.  Has  he  ever  thought  who  collects  Mr. 
Bain?  '  So  runs  one  of  the  notes  that  sticks  in  the  memory. 
But  now  Mr.  Bradley's  own  conception  of  the  self  seems 
open  to  the  same  retort.  To  use  one  of  his  own  illustrations, 
the  qualities  or  different  elements  of  content  in  a  centre  seem 
as  loose  and  independent  as  marbles  in  a  bag,  and  when  the 
string  of  the  bag  is  loosened  the  marbles  escape,  as  it  were, 
into  the  empty  space  of  the  Absolute,  to  group  themselves 
afresh.  Or,  seeing  that  the  bag,  as  a  receptacle,  is  ulti- 
mately a  fiction,  or  an  accommodation  to  popular  thought, 
we  ought  rather  to  speak  of  temporarily  cohering  marbles 
detaching  themselves  from  their  groups  and  being  swept  into 
new  combinations.  But  not  so  must  we  think  of  any  self 
or  soul  or,  indeed,  of  anything  that  actually  exists,  not  even 
of  the  Absolute  itself,  if  it  is  to  be  more  than  an  abstraction, 
if  it  is  really,  as  it  is  said  to  be,  an  experience. 

The  term  '  centres  of  experience  '  involves,  of  course, 
a  spatial  metaphor,  but,  try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  get  rid 
of  such  metaphors;  and  the  term  centre,  or  the  essentially 
similar  term  focus,  which  Mr.  Bradley,  we  have  seen,  occa- 
sionally uses  as  a  variant,  expresses,  as  happily  as  we  can 
hope  to  do,  the  characteristic  nature  of  the  individual  or 
1 Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  240. 


xv         THE  ORIGIN  OF  FINITE  CENTRES         285 

the  concrete  universal  as  (formally  at  least)  a  self-contained 
world,  in  which  a  certain  manifold  of  content  acquires  an 
internal  unity  as  a  single  self  or  subject.  The  self  or  sub- 
ject, as  we  have  already  said,  is  not  to  be  conceived  as  an 
entity  over  and  above  the  content,  or  as  a  point  of  bare 
existence  to  which  the  content  is,  as  it  were,  attached,  or 
even  as  an  eye  placed  in  position  over  against  its  objects,  to 
pass  them  in  review.  The  unity  of  the  subject,  we  may 
agree,  simply  expresses  this  peculiar  organization  or  sys- 
tematization  of  the  content.  But  it  is  not  simply  the  unity 
which  a  systematic  whole  of  content  might  possess  as  an 
object  or  for  a  spectator.  Its  content,  in  Professor  Bosan- 
quet's  phrase,  has  '  come  alive  ' ;  it  has  become  a  unity  for 
itself,  a  subject.  This  is,  in  very  general  terms,  what  we 
mean  by  a  finite  centre,  a  soul  or,  in  its  highest  form,  a  self. 
The  origin  of  such  centres  is,  perhaps,  the  only  fact  to 
which  we  can  fitly  apply  the  term  creation,  for  they  neces- 
sarily import  into  the  universe  an  element  of  relative  inde- 
pendence and  separateness  which  is  not  involved  in  the 
notion  of  externality  as  such.  Externality,  i.  e.  the  general 
system  of  nature,  cannot  be  really  separated  from  the  foci  in 
which  it  finds  expression;  to  make  this  separation,  as  we 
argued  in  the  first  course,  is  to  hypostatize  an  abstraction. 
But  if  we  try  to  imagine  a  purely  mechanical  system  without 
any  such  living  centres,  it  might  seem  possible  to  conceive  it 
as  simply  the  object  of  an  absolute  percipient.  And  the 
abstraction  may  help  us  to  realize,  by  force  of  contrast,  that 
a  being  which  exists  in  any  degree  for  itself,  as  a  conscious 
subject,  rounds  itself  thereby  to  an  individual  whole,  and 
acquires  in  so  doing  an  independence  which  we  should  not 
attribute  to  a  mere  object.  To  understand  the  process  of 
such  creation  is  necessarily  beyond  us ;  we  can  barely  describe 
its  phases  without  involving  ourselves  in  contradictions.  In 
one  aspect,  the  soul  appears  to  be  the  product  of  the  general 
system  of  things;  in  another  aspect  it  appears  to  be  self- 


286    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

created  by  its  own  action,  to  presuppose  its  own  existence  at 
every  stage  of  its  progress — so  that  it  has  been  said  para- 
doxically, there  is  no  first  moment  of  self -consciousness, 
but  only  a  second. 

Professor  Bosanquet,  in  his  careful  and  suggestive  chap- 
ters on  '  The  Moulding  of  Souls  ',  describes  the  origin  of  life 
as  consisting  essentially  in  the  existence  of  '  a  centre  sensitive 
to  a  more  concrete  environment  than  that  to  which  physical 
matter  reacts  ',  and  '  capable  ',  he  adds,  '  of  maintaining, 
combining  and  transmitting  adaptations,  so  as  to  build  up 
a  series  of  adapted  creatures.  In  a  word,  what  is  needed  is 
a  centre  of  unification,  differentiated  by  the  externality 
which  it  unifies,  nothing  more  in  principle  than  this.'  And 
by  '  the  sculpturing  process  of  natural  selection  '  everything 
else  is  added,  '  the  content  of  life  and  mind  [being]  elicited 
by  the  bare  principle  of  totality  or  non-contradiction  '  from 
the  environment  or  '  range  of  externality  '  which  constitutes 
the  '  circumference  '  of  the  living  or  intelligent  centre.  It  is 
a  process,  as  he  rather  strikingly  puts  it,  of  '  eliciting  our 
own  souls  from  their  outsides  V  '  Elicit ',  however,  as  he 
remarks  himself,  a  little  later,  '  is  a  useful  word,  but  covers 
an  almost  miraculous  creation,  which  it  does  not  explain.' 2 
For,  of  course,  '  centre  '  must  be  understood  as  an  active 
centre  of  response,  not  simply  as  a  focus  in  which  a  certain 
range  of  externality  reflects  itself  into  unity.  Professor 
Bosanquet's  quasi-metaphorical  phrases  sometimes  seem  to 
suggest  the  latter  idea,  and  his  remarks  on  the  origin  of  life, 
taken  together  with  the  exclusive  stress  laid  on  the  function 
of  the  environment,  seem  unduly  to  minimize  the  momentous 
difference  between  a  responsive  centre  '  capable  of  main- 
taining, combining  and  transmitting  its  adaptations  ',  and  the 
mass-points  which  serve  the  physicist  as  the  substrata  of  the 
scheme  of  mechanical  movements.  The  mass-point  is  a 
theoretical  abstraction;  the  responsive  centre  is  a  practical 
1  Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  74,  78-9.  3  Ibid.,  p.  97. 


xv     ESSENTIAL  MYSTERY  OF  THE  FACT     287 

and  living  reality.  In  his  first  volume  he  lays  a  similar  stress 
on  the  physical  basis  of  mind  and  the  intimate  correlation 
of  the  organism  with  its  environment,  but  he  reminds  us, 
in  a  phrase  which  I  made  use  of  in  an  earlier  lecture,1  that 
all  we  can  ultimately  mean  by  such  assertions  of  the  depend- 
ence of  mind  on  organic  conditions  is  to  conceive  the  soul 
or  self  as  '  a  supervenient  perfection  ' ;  '  a  perfection  granted 
by  the  Absolute  according  to  general  laws  upon  certain 
complex  occasions  and  arrangements  of  externality  '.  In  the 
conscious  being,  he  adds,  '  the  Absolute  begins  to  reveal  its 
proper  nature  through  and  in  union  with  a  certain  focus 
of  externalities  '.2  Lotze,  to  whose  phraseology  Professor 
Bosanquet  refers,  while  emphasizing  the  inevitable  mystery 
involved  in  the  process,  brings  out  more  clearly  the  peculiar 
nature  of  the  product.  '  How  it  can  be  brought  about/  he 
says,  '  or  how  the  creative  power  of  the  Absolute  begins  to 
bring  it  about,  that  an  existence  is  produced  which/not  only 
in  accordance  with  universal  laws  produces  and  experiences 
effects  and  alterations  in  its  connexion  with  others,  but  also, 
in  its  ideas,  emotions  and  efforts,  separates  itself  from  the 
common  foundation  of  all  things,  and  becomes  to  a  certain 
extent  an  independent  centre — this  question  we  shall  no 
more  attempt  to  answer  than  we  have  others  like  it.  Our 
business  is  not  to  make  the  world,  but  to  understand  the 
inner  connexion  of  the  world  that  is  realized  already;  and 
it  was  this  problem  that  forced  us  to  lay  down  our  limiting 
idea  of  the  Absolute  and  its  inner  creation  of  countless  finite 
beings.  This  idea  we  found  it  necessary  to  regard  as  the 
conception  of  an  ultimate  fact.' 3 

Lotze's  statement  is  important,  because  it  is  just  the 
partial  independence  of  the  finite  centre,  the  way  in  which  it 
'  separates  itself  from  the  common  foundation  of  all  things  ', 

1  Cf.  supra,  p.  99. 

*  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  189-93. 

*  Metaphysic,  section  246  (English  translation,  pp.  432-3). 


288    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

which  constitutes  the  essential  mystery  of  the  fact.  Monistic 
writers  are  too  apt,  after  accepting  the  fact  (as  in  some 
sense,  of  course,  they  must),  to  proceed  to  obliterate  or  ex- 
plain away  its  characteristic  features.  But  if  the  individuals 
are  simply  pipes  through  which  the  Absolute  pours  itself, 
jets,  as  it  were,  of  one  fountain,  there  is  no  creation,  no  real 
differentiation,  and,  therefore,  in  a  sense,  no  mystery.  A 
self  which  is  merely  the  channel  or  mouthpiece  of  another 
self  is  not  a  self.  It  is  of  the  very  nature  of  a  self  that  it 
thinks  and  acts  and  views  the  world  from  its  own  centre: 
each  of  us,  as  it  has  been  said,  dichotomizes  the  universe  in 
a  different  place.  No  supposed  result  of  speculative  theory 
can  override  a  certainty  based  on  direct  experience — the 
certainty,  namely,  that  it  is  we  who  act  and  we  who  think. 
We  are  not  simply  an  ideal  (i.  e.  an  imaginary)  point 
through  which  the  forces  or  ideas  of  the  universe  cross  and 
pass.  This  primary  conviction  is  not  inspired  by  the  ulterior 
motive  of  introducing  pure  contingency  and  overthrowing 
the  idea  of  law  and  system.1  No  doubt  it  excludes  a  fatal- 
istic determinism  a  tergo,  which  is  simply  the  denial  of  self- 
hood altogether;  but  it  forces  itself  upon  us  apart  from  any 
outlook  upon  consequences.  It  is,  in  a  sense,  a  direct  cer- 
tainty, but  it  is  based  also  on  an  insight  into  the  contradictory 
nature  of  any  counter-hypothesis.  The  creation  of  creators, 
says  Professor  Bosanquet  dogmatically,  is  a  mere  self-contra- 
diction; and,  no  doubt,  that  would  be  so,  if  the  term  creator 
were  understood  in  a  literal  and  absolute  sense.  But  the 
meaning  which  the  epigrammatic  phrase  is  intended  to  con- 
vey is  just  that  the  selves  are  real  centres  of  existence  and 
not  points  of  intersection  or  radiating  centres  of  a  single 
force.  As  already  said,  there  is  no  creation  in  the  case,  no 
otherness  at  all,  unless  the  selves  have  some  kind  of  inde- 
pendent status  conferred  upon  them.  And  to  say,  as  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet  does  in  the  same  breath  with  his  accusation 
1  As  Professor  Bosanquet  always  seems  to  imagine. 


xv        THE  DIFFERENCE  MUST  BE  REAL        289 

of  self-contradiction,  that  '  there  cannot  be  genuine  freedom 
unless  the  divine  will  is  genuinely  one  with  that  of  finite 
beings  in  a  single  personality  ' ,  is,  to  my  mind  (unless  we  are 
speaking  of  the  ethical  and  spiritual  harmony  of  the  two 
wills),  to  furnish  a  much  more  glaring  instance  of  a  self- 
contradiction,  for  it  is  to  deny  that  there  are  two  wills  at  all. 
Professor  Bosanquet  is  fond  of  appealing  to  the  great 
experiences  of  life — to  love,  to  the  religious  consciousness, 
to  social  union — as  carrying  us  out  of  the  quasi-legal  world 
of  selfish  claims  and  individualistic  justice  into  a  world  of 
deeper  spiritual  membership,  where  such  claims  disappear  in 
the  intimate  consciousness  of  union  with  our  fellows,  with 
the  beloved  object,  or  with  God.  And  again  this  is  true, 
beyond  question,  of  all  private  and  exclusive  or,  as  we  say, 
purely  selfish  desires  and  claims.  But  I  appeal  confidently 
to  the  same  great  experiences  to  prove  the  absolute  necessity 
of  what  I  will  call  '  otherness  ',  if  they  are  to  exist  at  all. 
It  takes  two  not  only  to  make  a  bargain;  it  takes  two  to 
love  and  to  be  loved,  two  to  worship  and  to  be  worshipped, 
and  many  combined  in  a  common  purpose  to  form  a  society 
or  a  people.  Surely,  as  the  poet  says,  sweet  love  were  slain, 
could  difference  be  abolished;  the  most  self-effacing  love  but 
ministers  to  the  intensity  of  a  double  fruition.  As  in  the  love 
of  man  and  woman,  so  in  a  great  friendship  the  completest 
identification  of  interests  and  aims  does  not  merge  the 
friends  in  one;  the  most  perfect  alter  ego  must  remain  an 
alter  if  the  experience  is  to  exist,  if  the  joy  of  an  intensified 
life  is  to  be  tasted  at  all.  Selfhood  is  not  selfishness.  And, 
passing  to  the  instance  of  society,  it  is  an  insidious  fallacy  to 
speak  as  if,  with  the  growth  of  social  solidarity,  there  was 
formed  '  an  individuality  '  in  which  particular  centres  '  tend 
to  be,  as  particular  centres,  transcended  and  absorbed  V 
Surely  the  better  the  society — the  more  pervasive  the  spirit 
of  membership — the  more  fully  does  each  member  realize 
1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  92. 


2QO    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

and  enjoy  his  own  individuality.  It  is  an  individual  foci 
that  the  common  life  burns:  it  is  reflected  to  us  from  the 
countenances  of  our  fellows. 

And  when  we  come  finally  to  the  religious  consciousness 
the  same  necessity  holds.  I  will  take  Professor  Bosanquet's 
own  account  of  that  experience,  to  which  both  he  and  Mr. 
Bradley  assign — and  rightly  assign — such  central  signifi- 
cance. The  religious  consciousness  is  expressly  defined  by 
Professor  Bosanquet  as  self -recognition,1  the  recognition 
by  the  finite  of  its  '  true  being '  and  of  its  '  union  with  the 
whole  ' ;  the  insight  into  '  the  impossibility  of  its  finding 
peace  otherwise  than  as  offering  itself  to  the  whole  '.  Or, 
again,  '  the  primary  principle  of  religion  '  is  said  to  be  found 
*  in  devotion  and  worship,  such  that  in  them  the  self  not 
merely,  as  in  all  action,  passes  beyond  itself,  but  consciously 
and  intentionally  rejects  itself  as  worthless,  because  of  the 
supreme  value  which  it  attaches  to  the  object  with  which 
it  desires  and  affirms  its  union  '.2  Similarly,  in  the  conclud- 
ing chapter,  the  experience  is  described  as  '  self-identification 
with  perfection  ';  '  accepting  perfection  as  real  while  admit- 
ting that  he  cannot  attain  it  in  his  own  right ' ;  '  his  identifi- 
cation by  faith  with  the  greatness  of  the  universe  '.3  The 
description  is,  I  think,  beyond  challenge,  but  every  phrase 
of  it  surely  implies  that  reality  of  difference  for  which  the 
system,  in  its  letter  at  least,  appears  to  leave  no  room.  If 
the  specific  religious  insight  is  the  recognition  of  dependence, 
it  is  only  inasmuch  as  we  have  a  certain  independent  status 
that  we  can  recognize  and  affirm  the  dependence.  When 
the  religious  man  identifies  himself  with  the  perfection 
of  the  whole,  and,  as  it  were,  appropriates  it  to  himself, 
the  very  act  of  self -identification  implies  the  individual 
difference  of  the  self  that  makes  it.  Otherwise  the  whole 


1 '  Self-recognition,  as  we  shall  see,  is  another  phrase  for  the  religious 
consciousness  '  (Value  and  Destiny,  p.  18;  cf.  p.  20).  *  Ibid.,  p.  2<x 

1  Ibid.,  p.  303.    Cf.  the  Summary,  p.  xxxii. 


xv       PERSONALITY  AS  A  FORMED  WILL       291 

thing  is  a  puppet  show,  and  we  fall  back  on  the  vulgar  pan- 
theism which  makes  the  Absolute  the  direct  agent  in  every- 
thing that  is  done : 

And  patiently  exact, 

This  universal  God 

Alike  to  any  act 

Proceeds  at  any  nod, 
And  quietly  declaims  the  cursings  of  himself.1 

The  religious  attitude — all  that  we  mean  by  worship,  adora- 
tion, self -surrender — is  wholly  impossible,  if  the  selves  are 
conceived  as  telephone  wires  along  which  the  Absolute  acts 
or  thinks.  As  it  has  often  been  remarked,  the  system  of 
Spinoza  has  no  room  in  it  for  Spinoza  himself  and  '  the 
intellectual  love  of  God  '  with  which  he  closes  his  Ethics. 
That  sublime  acquiescence,  that  ardour  of  self -identification 
with  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  is  possible  only  to  beings  who 
are  more  than  mere  modes  of  a  divine  Substance — whose 
prerogative  it  rather  is  to  become  the  sons  of  God. 

The  relation  of  the  Absolute  to  finite  individuals  cannot, 
in  fact,  be  properly  stated  in  terms  of  the  old  metaphysic  of 
substance.  The  essential  feature  of  the  Christian  conception 
of  the  world,  in  contrast  to  the  Hellenic,  may  be  said  to  be 
that  it  regards  the  person  and  the  relations  of  persons  to  one 
another  as  the  essence  of  reality,  whereas  Greek  thought 
conceived  of  personality,  however  spiritual,  as  a  restrictive 
characteristic  of  the  finite — a  transitory  product  of  a  life 
which  as  a  whole  is  impersonal.2  Modern  Absolutism  seems, 
in  this  respect,  to  revert  to  the  pre-Christian  mode  of  con- 
ception, and  to  repeat  also  the  too  exclusively  intellectualistic 
attitude,  which  characterizes  Greek  thought  in  the  main. 
But  no  solution  of  the  problem  of  God  and  man  can  be 
reached  from  a  consideration  of  man  as  a  merely  cognitive 

1  Empedocles  on  Etna. 

*  Eraser,  Philosophy  of  Theism,  vol.  i,  p.  77,  '  the  profound  personal- 
ism  of  Christianity '.  Cf.  Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  238 
(English  translation). 


292    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

being.  Bare  will  is  certainly  an  abstraction ;  but  so  is  knowl- 
edge, if  it  is  not  regarded  as  the  moving  and  determining 
force  in  a  personality,  shaping  its  attitude  to  the  world  and 
all  the  action  which  is  the  outcome  of  that  attitude.  In  this 
sense  it  is  the  character,  or  spiritual  will,  that  is  the  concrete 
personality.  It  is  as  such  a  will  that  man  is  independent.  To 
be  a  self  is  to  be  a  formed  will,  originating  its  own  actions 
and  accepting  ultimate  responsibility  for  them.  For  in  all 
questions  of  moral  causation  the  person  is  necessarily,  in  our 
explanations,  a  terminus  ad  quern  or  a  terminus  a  quo.  He 
is  the  source  of  the  action :  we  cannot  go  behind  him  and 
treat  him  as  a  thoroughfare  through  which  certain  forces 
operate  and  contrive  to  produce  a  particular  result.  The 
person  is  certainly  not  a  fixed  and  unchangeable  unit.  He 
is  open  to  moral  education  and  spiritual  regeneration :  he 
may  change  so  much  as  to  become,  in  the  expressive  phrase 
of  religion,  a  new  creature.  But  although  he  is  thus  open 
to  all  the  influences  of  the  universe,  these  do  not  act  on  him 
like  forces  ab  extra.  They  make  their  appeal  to  him,  but 
he  must  give  the  response.  He  cannot  be  driven,  he  must 
be  drawn.  And,  therefore,  the  process  of  transformation  is 
always,  in  a  very  real  aspect  of  it,  his  own  act,  his  deliberate 
choice.  We  may  believe  in  the  ultimately  constraining 
power  of  the  Good,1  but  a  moral  being  cannot  be  comman- 
deered ;  he  must  be  persuaded,  and  the  process  may  be  long. 
'  Behold,  I  stand  at  the  door  and  knock :  if  any  man  hear  my 
voice  and  open  the  door,  I  will  come  in  to  him,  and  sup  with 
him,  and  he  with  me.'  Even  the  divine  importunity  will  not 
force  an  entrance.  This  freedom  belongs  to  a  self-conscious 
being  as  such,  and  it  is  the  fundamental  condition  of  the 
ethical  life;  without  it  we  should  have  a  world  of  automata. 

1  Cf .  Emerson's  lines,  '  The  Park ' : 

Yet  spake  yon  purple  mountain, 

Yet  said  yon  ancient  wood, 
That  Night  or  Day,  that  Love  or  Crime 

Leads  all  souls  to  the  Good. 


xv  THE  FACT  OF  FREEDOM  293 

No  doubt  the  creation  of  beings  who  are  really  selves,  with 
this  measure  of  '  apartness  '  and  independent  action,  is  the 
'  main  miracle  ' l  of  the  universe.  It  is,  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  impossible  that  we  should  understand  the  relation 
(if  one  may  even  use  such  a  finite  term  as  relation)  between 
a  creative  Spirit  and  its  creatures,  whether  as  regards  the 
independence  conferred  or  the  mode  in  which  the  life-history 
of  the  finite  being  still  remains  part  of  the  infinite  experience. 
Finite  beings  know  one  another  from  the  outside,  as  it  were, 
the  knower  being  ipso  facto  excluded  from  the  immediate 
experience  of  any  other  centre.  But  there  can  be  no  such 
barrier,  we  may  suppose,  between  the  finite  consciousness 
and  the  Being  in  which  its  existence  is  rooted.  It  must 
remain  open  and  accessible — it  must  enter  into  the  divine 
experience  in  a  way  for  which  our  mode  of  knowing  hardly 
furnishes  us  with  an  analogy.  It  is,  I  say,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  impossible  that  we  should  understand,  and  be  able 
to  construct  for  ourselves,  the  relation  in  question;  for  to 
do  so  would  be  to  transcend  the  conditions  of  our  own 
individuality,  to  get,  as  it  were,  behind  the  conditions  of 
finite  existence  and  actually  repeat  the  process  of  creation 
and  realize  the  absolute  experience.  Accordingly,  when  we 
do  try  to  schematize  the  fact  for  ourselves,  we  either  elimi- 
nate the  characteristics  of  selfhood  by  making  the  individual 
simply  a  vehicle  of  transmission  or,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
lose  hold  of  the  creative  unity  altogether  by  treating  the 
individuals  as  independent,  self-subsistent  units.  But  be- 
cause such  is  the  inevitable  fate  of  any  attempt  to  describe 
the  fact  in  terms  devised  to  express  the  relation  of  one  finite 
fact  to  another,  and  only  there  appropriate,  it  by  no  means 
follows  that  such  creation  is  impossible  for  the  Absolute. 
And  certainly  no  theoretic  difficulties  in  conceiving  how  we 

1  This  main-miracle,  that  thou  art  thou, 
With  power  on  thine  own  act  and  on  the  world. 

Tennyson,  '  De  Profundis '. 


294    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

can  be  free  should  prevent  us  from  recognizing  that  we  are 
free.  In  asserting  freedom  we  are  not  asserting  anything 
additional  and  extraneous  about  our  experience;  we  are 
simply  describing  its  nature,  as  we  know  it  from  within. 
And  we  are  applying,  in  this  supreme  instance,  the  principle 
which  has  guided  us  throughout,  the  principle  of  the  reality 
of  appearances. 

So  far  as  we  are  concerned,  individuation,  in  the  sense 
explained,  appears  to  represent  the  fundamental  method  of 
creation,  or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  the  fundamental  structure 
of  the  actual  world.  And  when  we  turn  to  the  Absolute  and 
try  to  figure  to  ourselves  '  the  art  of  world-making  ' 1  from 
that  standpoint,  the  same  suggestion  seems  strongly  empha- 
sized. '  We  are  finite,'  says  Professor  Bosanquet  in  a  fine 
passage  of  his  introductory  lecture,  '  we  are  finite,  which 
means  incomplete,  and  not  fitted  to  be  absolute  ends.  .  .  . 
We  must  have  something  greater  than  our  finite  selves 
to  contemplate.  We  want  something  above  us,  something 
to  make  us  dare  and  do  and  hope  to  be.' 2  '  The  unit ',  he 
says  in  another  place,  '  looks  from  itself  and  not  to  itself 
and  asks  nothing  better  than  to  be  lost  in  the  whole.' 8 
Nothing  could  be  truer.  It  is  the  familiar  paradox  of  the 
ethical  and  religious  life,  dying  to  live,  self-realization 
through  self-sacrifice,  self -development  through  absorption 
in  objective  interests  and  in  the  currents  of  the  universal 
life.  The  individual  who  would  find  his  end  in  the  culture 
of  his  own  personality,  whether  as  a  moral  work  of  art  or  in 
the  wider  fields  of  literature  and  taste,  suffers  the  same 
defeat  as  the  voluptuary  who  pursues  pleasure  for  pleasure's 
sake.  He  goes  in  danger  of  the  doom  figured  by  Tennyson 
in  '  The  Palace  of  Art '.  But  although  the  individual  may 
not  make  himself  his  own  End,  the  world  of  finite  indi- 
viduals may  well  constitute  the  End  of  the  Absolute.  How 

1  As  Hume  calls  it.  *  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  25. 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  153. 


xv    '  FROM  THE  SIDE  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE '    295 

can  we  ascribe  to  the  Absolute,  as  many  theologians  have 
done,  the  self-centred  life,  the  contemplation  of  His  own 
glory,  which  spells  moral  death  in  the  creature?  Is  it  rea- 
sonable to  deny  of  the  fontal  life  of  God  that  giving  of 
Himself  and  rinding  of  Himself  in  others,  which  we  recog- 
nize as  the  perfection  and  fruition  of  the  human  life?  This 
would  be,  under  pretext  of  exalting  the  divine,  to  place  it 
lower  than  the  best  we  know.  More  reasonable  is  it  to  sup- 
pose that  the  infinite  reality  reflects  itself  in  the  finite 
nature,  and  that,  in  the  conditions  of  mortal  perfection, 

Our  souls  have  sight  of  that  immortal  sea 

Which  brought  us  hither- 
repeating  in  the  process  of  their  own  experience  the  flux  and 
reflux  of  the  cosmic  life. 

The  idea  of  end  or  purpose  may  not  be  literally  applicable 
in  such  a  sphere,  but  we  may  at  least  say  that  just '  from  the 
side  of  the  Absolute  '  the  meaning  of  the  finite  process  must 
lie  in  the  creation  of  a  world  of  individual  spirits;  for  to 
such  alone  can  He  reveal  himself,  and  from  them  receive  the 
answering  tribute  of  love  and  adoration.  The  coming  into 
being  of  such  internalities  means  '  eliciting ',  in  Professor 
Bosanquet's  phrase,  out  of  the  common  fund  of  externality 
a  new  world  of  appreciation,  of  mutual  recognition  and 
spiritual  communion,  to  which  the  former  now  assumes 
a  merely  instrumental  function,  a  circuit  made  by  the  Abso- 
lute towards  the  formation  of  beings  capable  of  spiritual 
response,  which  enrich  thereby  the  life  from  which  they 
spring.  Only  for  and  in  such  beings  does  the  Absolute  take 
on  the  lineaments  of  God.  This  world  of  self-conscious 
personalities  is  the  Civitas  Dei,  described  by  St.  Augustine 
and  by  Leibnitz;  it  is  the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit  of  which 
theologians  speak  as  the  great  consummation.  The  yearning 
of  the  divine  for  fellowship  is  the  idea  of  the  well-known 


296    ABSOLUTISM  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL    LECT. 

lines  of  Schiller  with  which  Hegel  closes  his  Phenomenology : 

Friendless  was  the  mighty  Lord  of  worlds, 
Felt  defect — therefore  created  spirits, 
Blessed  mirrors  of  his  blessedness  .  .  . 
From  the  chalice  of  the  world  of  souls 
Foams  for  him  now  infinitude. 

But  if  we  project  our  imagination  thus  into  the  vacancy 
before  the  world  was,  nay,  before  God  was  truly  God,  we 
must  remember  that  we  are  merely  translating  into  terms  of 
time,  as  in  a  Platonic  myth,  the  eternal  fact  of  the  divine 
nature,  as  a  self-communicating  life.  The  divine  Eremite, 
as  a  pre-existent  Creator,  is  a  figure,  if  one  may  so  speak,  of 
the  logical  imagination :  it  indicates  what  God  is  not,  it  does 
not  tell  us  what  He  once  was. 


NOTE  ON  PROFESSOR  BOSANQUET'S  USE  OF  THE 
SOCIAL  ANALOGY 

Professor  Bosanquet  himself,  on  more  than  one  occasion, 
suggests  that  in  the  conception  of  society  we  have  the  best 
analogy  of  the  absolute  experience.  So  far  as  there  is  formed 
'a  social  mind',  he  says,  'the  particular  centres  begin  to  be 
adapted  as  members  of  an  individuality  transcending  their 
own.  .  .  .  Their  qualities  begin  to  be  reinforced  by  others, 
their  deficiencies  supplied,  in  a  word,  their  immanent  contra- 
dictions removed  by  readjustment  and  supplementation,  so  that 
the  body  of  particularised  centres  begins  to  take  on  a  distinct 
resemblance  to  what  we  know  must  be  the  character  of  the 
absolute.'  1  So,  again,  he  speaks  of  '  the  social  whole  and 
civilisation '  as  '  a  realised  anticipation  of  the  absolute.' 2 
'Ultimate  reality  is  for  [the  metaphysical]  argument', he  says, 
'  what  the  social  collectivity  is  for  the  social  student.' 3  But 
there  is  the  same  wavering  of  point  of  view  which  we  have 
noted  throughout,  due  to  the  defective  sense  of  personality.  It 
is  the  supra-individual  and,  as  it  were,  impersonal  character  of 
the  social  mind  or  the  social  collectivity  that  seems  to  commend 

1  Value  and  Destiny,  p.  90.  *  Ibid.,  p.  142.  *  Ibid.,  p.  n. 


xv  THE  SOCIAL  ANALOGY  297 

it  to  Professor  Bosanquet  as  an  analogy.  He  speaks,  in  the 
context  of  the  passage  first  quoted,  of  the  tendency  of  the  so- 
cial process  as  being  '  towards  an  individuality  in  which  cen- 
tres, formed  and  further  formed  by  such  a  process,  tend  to  be, 
as  particular  centres,  transcended  and  absorbed'.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  inasmuch  as  the  social  collectivity  has  no  self-con- 
sciousness, no  centralized  existence  of  its  own,  apart  from  the 
particular  centres  in  which  it  is  realized,  the  suggestion  of  the 
analogy,  when  thus  applied,  is  that  the  Absolute  also  is  not  to 
be  regarded  as  a  self-centred  life.  In  that  way  the  personality 
both  of  the  finite  centres  and  of  the  Absolute  tends  to  dis- 
appear. But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  development  of  society,  so 
far  from  '  absorbing '  its  individual  members,  is  a  continual 
development  of  their  self-consciousness,  and  furnishes  no 
grounds,  therefore,  for  inferring  their  disappearance,  as  par- 
ticular centres,  in  the  Absolute.  And  if  we  take  the  idea  of 
centrality  or  individuation  '  in  bitter  earnest  '  as  the  character- 
istic of  everything  that  is  concretely  real,  we  shall  not  speak  or 
think  of  the  Absolute  as  '  a  vast  continuum  '  of  which  '  finite 
self-conscious  creatures'  are  'fragments^1  but  rather  as  the 
focal  unity  of  a  world  of  self-conscious  worlds,  to  which  it  is 
not  only  their  sustaining  substance  but  also  the  illumination  of 
their  lives.  Society,  taken  by  itself,  is  an  abstraction  hyposta- 
tized,  but  the  idea  of  a  divine  Socius  has  been  one  of  the  most 
abiding  inspirations  of  religious  experience.2 

1 '  We  approach  the  study  of  finite  self-conscious  creatures,  prepared 
to  find  in  them  the  fragments  of  a  vast  continuum  '  (Value  and  Destiny, 
p.  ll).  Cf.  p.  12,  'the  continuum  of  the  whole'. 

1  See  Supplementary  Note  D  on  Lectures  XIV  and  XV,  p.  426- 


LECTURE  XVI 

THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION 
"V 

AT  the  close  of  the  last  lecturt  we  found  ourselves  insen- 
sibly involved  in  criticism  of  a  certain  conception  of  Crea- 
tion. The  word  Creation  recurs  so  constantly  in  philosophi- 
cal and  theological  discussions  of  the  relation  of  God  to  the 
world  that  it  is  desirable  to  submit  the  idea  to  a  somewhat 
more  careful  examination,  in  order  to  discover  the  meaning, 
or  meanings,  which  have  been  attached  to  the  conception. 
This  should  enable  us  to  determine  whether,  in  any  of  its 
senses,  it  is  to  be  taken  as  expressing  or  pointing  to  a  philo- 
sophical truth. 

The  idea  forms  a  natural  part  of  any  theory  which  treats 
_j3od  deistically  as  a  purely  transcendent  Being— ^a,  Cause  or 
Author  of  the  universe,  entirely  distinct  from  .an  effect 
which  is  spoken  of  metaphorically  as  '  the  work  of  his 
hands  '.  But  it  occurs  also  in  theories  which  claim  to  be 
immanental,  and  in  some  of  its  forms  it  may  not  be  incom- 
patible with  such  a  doctrine.  Historically,  the  idea  carries 
us  back  to  a  primitive  stage  of  pictorial  thought  like  that 
of  the  Zulus,  mentioned  by  Tylor,  who  trace  their  ancestry 
back  to  Unkulunkulu,  the  Old-old-one,  who  created  the 
world.  It  meets  us  with  something  of  a  sublime  simplicity 
in  the  opening  words  of  Genesis — '  In  the  beginning  God 
created  the  heaven  and  the  earth.'  Such  a  statement  yields 
a  temporary  satisfaction  to  the  craving  for  causal  explana- 
tion, though  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  beyond  the  child's 
question,  '  Who  made  God  ?  ',  to  become  aware  of  its  meta- 
physical insufficiency.  As  it  has  been  not  unjustly  said,1 

1  Von  Hartmann,  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,  iii.   196  (English 
translation). 


xvi  AN  EVENT  IN  THE  PAST  299 

'  ( 'ontentment  with  the  regress  to  a  God-creator  or  some 
similar  notion  is  the  true  mark  of  speculative  indolence.' 

The  first  feature  in  the  ordinary  idea  of  creation  to  which 
I  wish  to  draw  attention  is  that  creation  is  regarded  as  an 
event  which  took  place  at  a  definite  date  in  the  past,  to 
which  we  can  remount  by  a  temporal  and  causal  regress. 
The  old  chroniclers  in  their  na'ive  fashion  record  the  event 
methodically  with  the  other  entries  that  seemed  to  call  for 
notice,  such  as  the  death  of  a  monarch,  an  invasion  of  the 
enemy,  a  plague,  or  an  exceptionally  bad  winter.  We  know 
that  the  date  was  long  fixed  by  Biblical  chronology  as  the 
year  4004  B.  c.  And  so  it  remained  till  the  rise  of  geological 
science  brought  about  a  vast  extension  of  cosmic  time. 
Theology  accommodated  itself,  not  without  some  friction,' 
to  the  demands  of  the  new  science ;  but,  although  the  actual 
date  was  thrust  back,  the  view  of  creation  as  an  event 
that  happened  at  some  definite  period  in  the  past  still  con- 
tinued to  be  held  by  ordinary  theological  thought.  Perhaps 
I  should  say  still  continues  to  be  held,  for  I  find  so  able  a 
theologian  as  the  late  Professor  Flint  telling  us,  in  his 
lectures  on  Theism,  that  '  the  question  in  the  theistic  argu- 
ment from  causality  '  is  '  to  prove  the  universe  to  have  been 
an  event — to  have  had  a  commencement.  .  .  .  Compared 
therewith,  all  other  questions  which  have  been  introduced 
into,  or  associated  with,  the  argument  are  of  very  subordi- 
nate importance.'  l  And  accordingly,  in  order  to  answer 
the  question,  he  proceeds  to  an  examination  of  the  universe 
'  in  order  to  determine  whether  or  not  it  bears  the  marks 
of  being  an  event '.  And  because  such  an  examination 
reveals  mutability  stamped  upon  every  particular  fact  in 
the  universe,  even  its  apparently  most  stable  formations — so 
that  each  may  be  treated  as  an  event  dependent  on  a  pre- 
ceding event,  a  phase  in  a  universal  process  of  transforma- 
tion— we  have  the  extraordinary  conclusion  drawn  that 

1  Theism,  8th  ed.,  p.  101. 


300  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

the  universe  as  a  whole  is  an  event  or  effect  in  the  same 
sense.  P>ut  surely  such  an  argument  is  an  example  in  c.vcclsis 
of  the  fallacy  of  Composition.  A  little  later  the  author  is 
found  grasping  at  Lord  Kelvin's  then  current  deductions 
from  the  theory  of  heat.  '  If  this  theory  be  true/  he  says, 
'  physical  science,  instead  of  giving  any  countenance  to  the 
notion  of  matter  having  existed  from  eternity,  distinctly 
teaches  that  creation  took  place,  that  the  present  system  of 
nature  and  its  laws  originated  at  an  approximately  assign- 
able date  in  the  past.' *  But  Sir  William  Thomson's  specu- 
lation, based  on  the  ultimate  dissipation  or,  rather,  degra- 
dation of  energy — an  end  or  running-down  of  the  cosmic 
mechanism,  implying  a  beginning  or  start  of  the  same 
within  a  measurable  time — ^entirely  depended  on  the  concep- 
tion of  the  universe  as  a  finite  closed  system,  and  therefore 
begged  the  whole  question.  It  has  ceased  to  agitate  the 
scientific  world,  as  the  conditions  of  scientific  theorizing 
have  come  to  be  more  clearly  realized ;  and  the  recent 
discovery  of  the  immense  quantities  of  energy  generated 
through  the  disintegration  of  radium,  by  completely  upset- 
ting the  basis  of  the  calculation,  has  made  men  more  than 
ever  disinclined  to  draw  definite  and  final  conclusions  from 
theories  which  are  in  a  process  of  continual  revision.  In 
this  connexion  it  is  a  significant  fact,  on  which  I  cannot 
help  remarking,  that,  although  the  whole  face  of  physical 
science  has  been  changed  by  the  remarkable  discoveries 
of  the  last  twenty  years,  there  has  been  no  attempt  to 
exploit  the  changes  either  in  a  theological  or  an  anti- 
theological  interest. 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  the  importance  attached  by 
many  theologians  to  a  temporal  origin  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse, if  we  have  once  abandoned  the  geocentric  hypoth- 
esis and  its  corollaries.  The  spectacle  of  the  birth  and 
death  of  worlds  may  actually  be  seen  by  the  astronomer  as 
1  Theism,  p.  117. 


xvi  A  '  FIRST  '  CAUSE  301 

he  scans  the  heavens,  and  in  that  sense  the  earth  and  the 
solar  system  to  which  it  belongs  undoubtedly  had  a  beginning 
and  may  be  expected  to  have  an  end.  These,  however,  are 
but  local  incidents  of  the  distribution  of  the  cosmic  forces; 
what  passes  away  here  is  being  born,  or  is  ripening  to 
fruition,  elsewhere.  The  universe,  as  it  has  been  said,1  has 
no  seasons,  but  all  at  once  bears  its  leaves,  fruit,  and 
blossom.  In  Professor  Flint's  case,  the  stress  laid  on 
origin  '  at  some  assignable  date  in  the  past '  is  the  less 
easy  to  understand,  because  in  the  next  section  of  the  same 
lecture  he  proceeds  to  argue  that  secondary,  that  is  to  say, 
physical,  causes  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  causes  at  all ; 
each  merely  transmits  to  its  consequent  what  it  has  received 
from  its  antecedent.  VA  true  cause  is  one  to  which  the 
reason  not  only  moves  but  in  which  it  rests,  and  except  in 
a  first  cause  the  mind  cannot  rest.'  And  this  is  described 
as  '  a  single  all-originating,  all-pervading,  all-sustaining 
principle.  .  .  .  All  things  must  consequently  "  live,  move 
and  have  their  being  "  therein.  It  is  at  their  end  as  well 
as  at  their  origin ;  it  encompasses  them,  all  round ;  it 
penetrates  them,  all  through.  The  least  things  are  not 
merely  linked  on  to  it  through  intermediate  agencies  which 
go  back  an  enormous  distance,  but  are  immediately  present 
to  it,  and  filled  to  the  limit  of  their  faculties  with  its  power.' 2 
Obviously  we  have  passed  here  to  a  different  range  of  ideas 
altogether,3  to  a  frankly  immanental  view  of  causation 
where  '  first  ',  in  the  expression  '  first  cause  ',  has  no  refer- 
ence to  antecedence  in  time,  but  is  employed  proptcr  excel- 
lentiam,  as  the  Scholastics  say,  to  signify  that  what  is  so 
designated  is  the  true  and  only  cause.  As  Kant  no  less  than 
Spinoza  clearly  saw,  God  cannot  be  reached  at  the  farther 


1  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  500. 
8  Theism,  pp.  124,  127. 

*  This  is  noted  by  Adamson  in  his  Shaw  Lectures  On  the  Philosophy 
of  Kant,  p.  224. 


302  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

end  of  any  chain  of  phenomenal  antecedents  and  conse- 
quents. To  imagine  that  He  could  be  reached  in  that  way  is 
to  treat  God  and  the  divine  action  as  a  particular  fact,  one 
more  phenomenon  added  to  the  series.  But  to  talk  of  a 
'  first '  cause  in  that  sense  is  a  contradiction  in  terms;  once 
embarked  on  .tJie  modal  sequence  we  are  launched  upon  the 
infinite  regress.  God  is  cause  only  in  the  sense  of  ground, 
lhat  is  to  say,  the  Being  whose  nature  is  expressed  in  the 
system  as  a  whole.1  In  other  words,  God  is  cause  only 
when  causa  =  ratio ;  for  the  reason  or  ultimate  explanation 
of  anything  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  whole  nature  of  the 
system  in  which  it  is  included. 

The  idea  contained  in  Professor  Flint's  second  account, 
that  the  existence  of  the  universe  depends  upon  a  con- 
tinuous forth-putting  of  divine  power  was  recognized  by 
mediaeval  thinkers  in  the  doctrine,  which  ^Descartes  takes 
over  from  them,  that  '  the  conservation  of  a  substance  in 
each  moment  of  its  duration  requires  the  same  power  and 
act  that  would  be  necessary  to  create  it,  supposing  it  were 
not  yet  in  existence  '.2  This  they  held,  even  while  main- 
taining at  the  same  time  the  theory  of  the  original  creation 
of  the  universe  at  a  definite  period  in  the  past.  But  the 
more  thoughtfully  we  consider  the  idea  of  creation  as  a 
special  act  or  event  that  took  place  once  upon  a  time,  the 
more  inapplicable  does  it  appear.  .It  represents  the  universe 
as  in  no  way  orggpic  to  the  divine  life.  On  the  contrary, 
God  is  conceived  as  a  pre-existent,  self-centred  Person  to 
whom,  in  his  untroubled  eternity,  the  idea  of  such  a  creation 
occurs,  one  might  almost  say,  as  an  afterthought.  The 
inspiration  is  forthwith  put  into  execution;  the  world  is 

1  God,  in  Spinoza's  terminology,  is  not  (except  in  a  very  technical 
sense  which  he  explains)  the  causa  remota  of  anything,  but  He  is  the 
causa  immanens  of  all  things,  inasmuch  as  '  all  things  which  come  to 
pass,  come  to  pass  solely  through  the  law  of  the  infinite  nature  of  God, 
and  follow  from  his  essence'  (Ethics,  i.  15,  Scholium). 

1  Meditations,  iii. 


xvi  A  DIVINE  MAGICIAN  303 

created  '  by  the  word  of  his  power '.  A  universe  is  sum- 
moned into  existence  and  stands  somehow  there,  as  shapes 
and  figures  might  appear  at  a  sorcerer's  word  of  command, 
or  as  temples  and  towers  rise  like  an  exhalation  before  the 
eyes  of  a  dreamer.  The  act  is  an  incident  in  God's  exist- 
ence, and  the  product  stands  somehow  independently  outside 
him  and  goes  by  itself;  so  that  his  relation  to  the  subsequent 
unfolding  of  the  cosmic  drama  is  at  most  that  of  an  inter-  Cr- 
ested spectator. 

It  is  somehow  thus,  I  think,  that  popular  thought  envis- 
ages the  relation  of  God  to  the  universe  in  creation,  though 
it,  no  doubt,  naively  attributes  a  much  greater  importance 
to  the  incident  and  its  consequences  than  they  could  reason- 
ably be  supposed  to  have  for  such  an  eternally  self -involved 
Deity.  But  such  a  conception  of  creation  belongs  to  the 
same  circle  of  ideas  as  the  waving  of  a  magician's  wand.  It 
has  no  place  either  in  serious  thinking  or  in  genuine  religion. 
It  was  an  old  gibe  of  the  Epicureans,  familiar  in  Cicero's 
day,  to  ask  what  God  did  before  He  created  the  heavens  and 
the  earth,  and  how  He  came  to  choose  just  then  to  create 
them,  after  forbearing  to  do  so  for  so  many  ages — a  flip- 
pancy, no  doubt,  but  a  flippancy  provoked  in  some  measure 
by  the  shallow  anthropomorphism  of  the  doctrine  assailed. 
St.  Augustine,  who  twice  addresses  himself  to  meet  the 
criticism,  wins  a  technical  victory  by  the  argument  that 
time  itself  was  created  along  with  the  world  of  moving 
things  by  which  its  duration  is  measured,  so  that  there] 
could  be  no  lapse  of  unoccupied  time  before  the  creation, 
there  being  in  eternity  neither  before  nor  after.1  But,  in 
so  far  as  he  still  regards  creation  as  a  unique  event,  an 
event,  that  is,  which  took  place  once — an  act  of  God's  will, 
but  not  grounded  in  his  nature — he  does  not  meet  the  real 
difficulty.  The  world,  on  his  theory,  still  had  an  absolute 

1  Cum  tempore,  nan  in  tempore  is  Augustine's  distinction ;  the  world 
was  not  created  in  time  but  together  with  time.  So  Plato  in  the 
Timaeus,  38,  '  Time,  then,  was  created  with  the  heaven.' 


304  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

origin;  and,  even  if  it  had  never  existed  at  all,  the  self- 
existent  being  of  God  would  have  been  in  no  way  affected. 
And  this  external  and  almost  accidental  relation  between 
the  two  is  inevitably  implied  in  phrases  which  speak  of 
a  divine  existence  '  before  the  world  was  '.    But  this  solitary, 
ante-mundane  Figure  is  the  residuum  of  a  primitive  and 
pictorial  fashion  of  thinking,  a  magnified  man,  but  jarefied 
to  bare  mind,  after  .the  analogy  of  Aristotle's  pure  thinking 
upon  thought,  and  left  standing  apart  from  the  world  he 
,is  invoked  to  explain.     A  God  so  conceived  is  an  Absolute 
:in  the  old  bad  sense  of  a  being  existing  by  itself  with  no 
[essential  relations  to  anything  else.    But  if  God  is  the  prin- 
ciple  through   which  the  world   becomes   intelligible,   His 
relation  to  the  world  cannot  be  of  the  merely  incidental 
character  indicated.     If  the  universe  is  to  be  understood 
.  through  God,  the  nature  of  God  must  no  less  be  expressed 
Jn  the  universe  and  understood  through  it. 

Hence  more  speculative  minds,  both  before  and  after 
Augustine,  thinkers  both  Christian  and  non-Christian,  have 
insisted  that  creation  must  be  regarded  as  an  eternal  act, 
an  act  grounded  in  the  divine  nature  and,  therefore,  if  we 
are  to  use  the  language  of  time,  jcoeval  with  the  divine 
existence.  Such  was  the  doctrine  of  Origen,  the  early 
Father.  God,  says  Spinoza,  is  the  cause  of  all  things,  per  sef 
not  per  qccidens.  God  is  not  more  necessary  to  the  world; 
says  Hegel,  than  the  world  to  God.  Without  the  world, 
God  were  not  God.  '  God  is  the  creator  of  the  world,'  he 
says,  repeating  Spinoza's  thought,  '  it  belongs  to  his  being, 
to  his  essence  to  be  Creator.  .  .  .  That  he  is  Creator  is  more- 
over not  an  act  undertaken  once  for  all;  what  is  in  the 
Idea  is  an  eternal  element  or  determination  of  the  Idea 
itself.' 1  And  lest  these  latter  testimonies  should  be  in  any 
way. suspect,  I  will  quote  to  the  same  effect  from  Ulrici, 

1  Werke,  vol.  xii,  p.  181  (in  the  second  volume  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion'). 


xvi         CREATION  AS  AN  ETERNAL  ACT         305 

prominent  half  a  century  ago  as  a  defender  of  Theism 
against  all  that  he  deemed  pantheistic  error.  '  The  creation 
of  the  world  ',  says  Ulrici,  '  is  certainly  to  be  understood  as 
the  free  act  of  God.  But  his  freedom  is  nowise  an  arbi- 
trary freedom  (Willkiihr)  which  at  its  mere  good  pleasure 
might  act  so  or  otherwise,  might  act  or  refrain  from  actfi 
ing.  ...  In  truth  God  is  not  first  God  and  then  creator  oj 
the  world,  but  as  God  he  is  creator  of  the  world,  and  only  a* 
creator  of  the  world  is  he  God.  To  separate  the  two  ideas 
from  one  another  is  an  empty  and  arbitrary  abstraction, 
affirming  in  God  an  unmeaning  difference  which  contradicts 
the  unity  of  the  divine  nature.'  '  Hence,'  he  concludes,  '  just 
as  God  does  not  become  creator  of  the  world  but  is  from 
eternity  creator  of  the  world,  so  the  world  too,  though  not 
eternal  of  itself,  exists  from  eternity  as  the  creation  (or  act) 
of  God.' * 

But  if  the  world  is  thus  co-eternal  with  God,  how  does 
the  doctrine  differ,  it  may  be  asked,  from  the  Greek  doctrine 
of  the  eternity  of  matter,  in  opposition  to  which  the  Chris- 
tian dogma  of  '  creation  out  of  nothing '  was  primarily 
formulated?  The  difference  is  indicated  in  the  last  phrases 
quoted  from  Ulrici:  it  is  eternal  not  of  itself,  but  as  the 
eternal  creation  of  God.  The  doctrine  of  matter  in  the 
Platonic  and  Aristotelian  theories  is  a  somewhat  obscure 
question.  To  Plato,  who  hardly  uses  the  actual  term  at 
all,  matter  was  the  element  of  Non-Being,  with  which  the 
pure  Being  of  the  Ideas  is  mingled  so  as  to  produce  the 
phenomenal  world  of  sense-experience ;  and  he  is  commonly 
understood  to  be  thinking  chiefly  of  space  (the  unlimited, 
the  great  and  small,  as  he  calls  it)  considered  as  a  principle 
of  individuation  and  multiplication.  To  Aristotle,  from 
whose  philosophy  the  opposition  of  matter  and  form  is 
derived,  matter  is  the  idea  of  mere  potentiality  not  yet 
actual — an  idea  which  appears  to  be  involved  in  any  process 
1  Gott  und  Welt,  pp.  531-2. 


306  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

of  development.  Neither,  therefore,  understood  by  the  term 
what  it  means  in  our  ordinary  usage  and  in  modern  philos- 
ophy generally — the  elemental  structure  of  the  physical 
world.  Both,  however,  regarded  it  as  a  limitation  of  the 
purposive  action  of  the  ideal  or  formal  principle.  It  is 
the  avayxri,  or  mechanical  necessity,  which  imports  into  the 
world  of  experience  an  element  of  contingency  or  casualty, 
and  prevents  it  from  being  a  perfect  realization  or  embodi- 
ment of  reason.  Thus  in  Aristotle,  as  well  as  in  Plato,  the 
cosmic  process  is  regarded  '  ultimately  under  the  analogy 
of  the  plastic  artist  who  finds  in  the  hard  material  a  limit 
to  the  realization  of  his  formative  thought  V  Careful 
examination  might  show  that  Plato  and  Aristotle  in  such 
expressions  do  little  more  than  formulate  the  conditions 
which  appear  to  be  involved  in  the  existence  of  an  indi- 
viduated or  differentiated  universe  at  all,  conditions  which 
modern  philosophy  also  is  forced,  in  one  fashion  or  another, 
to  recognize.  But  looked  at  roughly — and  especially  if 
we  read  into  the  doctrine  of  matter  the  ordinary  associations 
of  the  word,  and  think,  as  the  Christian  writers  mainly  did, 
of  the  world-artificer  in  the  Timaeus — ancient  thought 
appears  to  leave  us  with  a  dualism  of  two  independent  and 
co-eternal  principles,  the  one  of  which  is  conceived  as 
hampering  and  limiting  the  divine  activity. 

It  was  against  this  dualistic  conception  that  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  creation  out  of  nothing  was  directed.  .All  the 
dogmas  of  the  creed,  it  has  often  been  pointed  out,  were 
formulated  as  counter-statements  directed  against  some 
error  or  heresy ;  and  hence  it  is  from  what  they  deny,  rather 
than  from  what  they  affirm,  that  their  true  meaning  or  inten- 
tion is  to  be  gathered.  The  doctrine  of  creation  out  of 
nothing  is  accordingly  the  denial  that  the  world  was  merely 
shaped  by  God  out  of  a  pre-existing  material.  God  is  cre- 
ator, not  artificer;  in  him. is  to  be  found  the  sole  explana- 

1  Windelband,  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  144  (English  translation). 


xvi  CREATION  '  OUT  OF  NOTHING  '  307 

tion  of  the  existence  of  the  world,  as  well  as  of  its  detailed 
arrangements.  There  are  not  two  principles,  but  one. 
Creation,  moreover,  was  expressly  defined  as  an  act  of  will, 
in  opposition  to  the  many  then  current  theories  of  emanation 
and  evolution,  in  which  the  derivation  of  the  world  from 
its  ultimate  principle  is  conceived,  by  the  aid  of  plentiful, 
and  often  gross,  physical  analogies,  as  a  process  undergone, 
so  to  speak,  by  the  ground  of  things  without  its  intelligent 
concurrence,  much  like  the  fission,  for  example,  by  which 
the  lowest  organisms  propagate  themselves.  The  impor- 
tance of  the  doctrine,  negatively,  in  these  two  directions, 
and  its  greater  relative  truth  may  therefore  be  freely 
acknowledged.  But  the  precise  positive  meaning  to  be  at- 
tached to  the  formula  was  necessarily  a  subject  for  further 
philosophical  analysis. 

Creation  was,  doubtless,  originally  conceived  by  early 
Christian  thinkers  in  the  quasi-magical  fashion  already 
described,  as  an  act  of  bare  will,  and  the  world  as  a  mere 
effect,  a  separate,  externally  posited,  existence.  But  this 
kind  of  factual  externality,  if  asserted  of  material  objects, 
could  not  long  be  maintained  in  regard  to  the  spiritual 
creation,  though  just  here,  from  another  point  of  view,  the 
independence  involved  in  real  creation  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
most  marked.  Already,  in  the  old  Hebrew  story,  man  is 
made  in  the  image  of  God,  and  it  is  through  the  breath  of 
God  that  he  becomes  a  living  soul.  And  the  direct  ethico- 
religious  relation  of  man  to  God,  which  was  the  essential 
characteristic  of  the  new  religion — the  idea  of  the  heavenly 
Father,  which  was  the  burden  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus — 
made  it  impossible  to  treat  the  divine  and  the  human  simply 
on  the  footing  of  cause  and  effect.  While  the  doctrine 
of  the  Word  made  flesh,  which  so  soon  became  the  central 
dogma  of  the  faith — asserting  with  a  stupendous  simplicity 
that  God  became  man — made  an  end,  in  principle,  of  mere 
monotheistic  transcendence.  Hence  in  Origen,  the  first 


308  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

philosophical  theologian  of  the  Church  in  any  larger  sense, 
we  have,  as  already  mentioned,  the  doctrine  of  an  eternal 
creation,  which,  as  the  continual  product  of  the  changeless 
divine  will,  becomes  an  expression  of  the  divine  nature 
rather  than  the  outcome  of  will  in  the  sense  of  choice. 
Origen  applies  this  conception  primarily  to  the  world  of 
free  spirits  which  he  describes  as  '  surrounding  the  Deity 
like  an  ever-living  garment '.  He  gives  a  more  fantastic 
account  of  the  material  world,  but  he  rightly  regards  it  as 
secondary  to  the  existence  and  function  of  the  spiritual 
creation.  On  similar  lines  rnodern  idealism,  as  represented 
by  Professor  Bosanquet,  while  treating  the  whole  universe 
as  organically  one,  regards  the  material  world  fundamentally 
as  that  '  .through  which  spirit  attains  incarnation  ' — '  a  sys- 
tem by  which  the  content  of  finite  minds  is  defined  and 
their  individuality  manifested  ' — the  instrument,  as  it  were, 
through  which  the  only  real  creation,  that  of  minds,  is 
worked  out.  And  thus,  although  finite  minds  exist  only 
through  nature,  nature  in  the  last  resort '  exists  only  through 
finite  mind  V 

On  such  a  general  view,  the  idea  of  creation  tends  to 
pass  into  that  of  manifestation — not  the  making  of  some- 
tking  out  of  nothing,  but  the  revelation  in  and  to  finite 
spirits  of  the  infinite  riches  of  the  divine  life.  It  was  in 
this  sense  that  theologians  and  the  makers  of  creeds  and 
confessions  came  to  speak  of  '  the  glory  of  God  '  as  the 
supreme  end  and  meaning  of  creation.  The  phrase  has 
proved  in  some  respects  an  unfortunate  one,  in  so  far  as  it 
tends  to  suggest  the  idea  of  self-glorification  and  display, 
as  of  a  despot  feeding  on  servile  adulation.  But  in  its 
religious  intention  it  is  to  be  interpreted  in  this  sense  of 
self -communication,  intensification  of  life  through  realiza- 
tion of  the  life  of  others.  In  this  sense  we  may  take  Plato's 
great  words  in  the  Timaeus :  '  Let  me  tell,  then,  why  the 

1  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  133,  135,  371. 


xvi  THE  SELF-IMPARTING  GOD  309 

Creator  created  and  made  the  universe.  ^Je  was ^gpod  .  .  . 
and  being  free  from  jealousy  he  desired  that  all  things 
should  be  as  like  himself  as  possible.'  It  is  in  this  spirit, 
too,  that  Hegel  so  often  tells  us  that  the  Christian,  that 
is  to  say,  in  his  view,  the  final  religious,  idea  of  God  is 
that  of  the  self-revealing  or  self-imparting  God.  And  this 
again  is  the  philosophical  meaning  of  the  saying  that  God 
is  Love. 

We  begin  to  see,  then,  that  creation  cannot  be  understood 
unless  in  reference  to  the  subjects  or  conscious  existences  in 
which  it  terminates.  The  objective  world  is  a  creation,  or 
rather,  as  we  have  said,  a  revelation  in  and  to  them,  '  there 
being ',  as  Berkeley  once  put  it,  '  nothing  new  to  God  '. 
Such  a  position  need  not,  however,  involve  us  in  the  sub- 
jective or  individualistic  idealism  of  Berkeley;  all  that  it 
means  is  that  we  refuse  to  take  one  element  or  moment  in  a 
process  and  treat  it  statically  as  a  fact  on  its  own  account. 
And  we  must  be  in  earnest  with  this  principle  throughout; 
for  it  applies  to  God  and  finite  minds,  the  apparent  begin- 
ning and  end  of  the  process,  just  as  much  as  to  nature,  the 
intermediary  or  connecting  term.  They  also  cannot  be  sub- 
stantiated as  static  units  apart  from  the  process  in  which 
they  live  or  which  constitutes  their  life.  In  the  case  of  the 
finite  conscious  being  this  is  fairly  obvious,  for  he  plainly 
receives  his  filling  from  nature  and  is  reduced  at  once  to 
a  bare  point  or  empty  focus  if  we  attempt  to  lift  him,  as  an 
independent  unitary  existence,  out  of  the  universal  life  from 
which  he  draws  his  spiritual  sustenance.  But  it  is  apt  not 
to  be  so  obvious  in  the  case  of  God.  And  yet,  in  this  ulti- 
mate reference,  it  is  equally  essential  to  be  clear  on  the  point, 
if  we  are  not  to  involve  ourselves  in  meaningless  speculation. 
Hardly  any  philosophy  has  avoided  such  speculation  or  at 
least  the  appearance  of  it.  Even  a  theory  like  Hegel's, 
which  insists  so  strongly  on  the  idea  of  creation  as  an  eternal 
act  or  an  eternal  process,  seems  repeatedly  by  its  form  of 


3io  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

statement  to  suggest  just  that  prior  existence  of  the  bare 
universal  which  it  is  the  essence  of  the  theory  to  deny. 

The  misleading  suggestion  referred  to  may  be  illustrated 
by  the  more  na'ive  statements  of  Janet,  to  whom,  however, 
by  reason  of  his  doctrine  of  final  causes,  it  was  more  than 
simply  a  defective  form  of  expression.  '  The  insoluble 
problem  ',  says  Janet,1  '  is  this :  Why  is  there  anything  but 
God?  Whether  it  be  held  that  God  produced  the  world  by 
a  necessary  emanation  or  that  he  created  it  freely,  the  diffi- 
culty still  remains — why  did  he  create  it,  why  did  he  not 
remain  wrapped  up  in  himself?'  'We  conceive',  he  says 
again,2  '  two  periods  in  the  divine  life,  whether  historically 
or  logically  distinct  does  not  here  much  concern  us.  In  the 
first  period,  God  is  in  himself,  collected,  concentrated,  gath- 
ered in  himself  in  his  indivisible  unity.  This  unity  is  ... 
the  absolute  concentration  of  being:  it  is  the  plenum,  God 
being  thus  conceived  as  the  absolute  unity,  act  and  con- 
sciousness. Creation  commences  when  God  comes  out  of 
himself,  and  thinks  something  else  than  himself.'  The  cause 
of  the  universe,  he  says  once  more,  '  is  beforehand,  entirely 
and  in  itself,  an  absolute  '.3  Hence  it  is  that  we  are  con- 
fronted with  the  old  difficulty,  '  the  wherefore  of  creation  '.4 
Now  such  a  problem  is  certainly,  as  he  says,  insoluble,  but  we 
have  created  the  difficulty  for  ourselves  by  substantiating 
God  as  a  solitary  unit  apart  from  the  universe  in  which  he 
expresses  himself.  As  Ulrici  puts  it,  God  is  known  to  us  as 
creator  of  the  world;  we  have  no  datum,  no  justification 
whatever,  for  supposing  his  existence  out  of  that  relation, 
'  wrapped  up  in  himself,'  as  Janet  puts  it,  '  entirely  and  in 
himself  an  absolute '. 

And  yet  thinkers  much  more  profound  than  Janet  appear 
to  be  embarrassed  by  the  same  kind  of  problem.  The 
whole  systematic  structure  of  German  idealism  in  Fichte 

1  Final  Causes,  p.  447  (English  translation).  *  Ibid.,  p.  437. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  375.  4  Ibid.,  p.  445. 


xvi  FALLACIOUS  ATTEMPTS  AT  DEDUCTION  311 

and  Hegel  might  almost  be  cited  in  evidence.  Think  only  of 
Fichte's  laborious  and  futile  attempts  in  the  Wissenschafts- 
lehre  to  deduce  the  Non-Ego  or  object  from  the  Absolute 
Egoor  barejubj  ect  with  which  he  starts.  The  Absolute  Ego, 
he  says,  '  is  absolutely  identical  with  itself  .  .  .  there  is 
nothing  here  to  be  distinguished,  no  multiplicity.  The  Ego 
is  everything  and  is  nothing,  because  it  is  nothing  for  itself.' 
Yet  he  proceeds  to  represent  it  as  an  infinite  outward  striv- 
ing, which  somehow  manages  at  the  same  time  to  throw  an 
obstacle  in  its  own  way,  by  impinging  against  which  it  is 
driven  back  upon  itself.  By  this  reflection  or  return  upon 
itself  it  attains  to  self -consciousness,  that  is  to  say,  first 
becomes  an  Ego  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word.  The  purely 
illusory  character  of  this  attempt  to  conjure  bare  object  out 
of  bare  subject  is  obvious.  It  is  hopeless  to  try  to  construct 
a  concrete  self-consciousness  out  of  the  interaction  of  these 
abstractions;  and,  when  challenged,  Fichte  tells  us,  as  we 
might  expect,  that  he  never  contemplated  what  would  be 
comparable  to  the  absurdity  of  writing  a  man's  biography 
before  his  birth.  '  Consciousness  ',  he  declares,  '  exists  with 
all  its  determinations  at  a  stroke,  just  as  the  universe  is  an 
organic  whole,  no  part  of  which  can  exist  without  all  the 
rest — something,  therefore,  which  cannot  have  come  gradu- 
ally into  being,  but  must  necessarily  have  been  there  in  its 
completeness  at  any  period  when  it  existed  at  all.'  He  tells 
us,  in  other  words,  that  he  has  not  been  narrating  what  ever 
took  place,  but  giving  a  logical  analysis  of  self -consciousness 
into  its  distinguishable  but  inseparable  moments  or  aspects. 
We  must  accept  the  disclaimer,  and  yet  the  start  with  an 
abstract  One,  and  the  persistent  attempt  to  make  it  posit  its 
own  other  and  thereby  generate  all  the  multiplicity  of  the 
world  '  out  of  the  unit  of  itself  ' 1  is  significant  of  a  deep- 
seated  tendency  of  thought.  We  meet  it  again  in  Hegel's 
start  with  the  pure  Idea  which  '  passes  over  ',  or  '  lets  itself 
1  A  phrase  of  Martineau's,  applied  by  him,  however,  in  another  reference. 


3i2  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

go  ',  into  Nature  in  order  to  return  thence  and  be  at  home 
with  itself  as  Spirit.  We  meet  it  even  more  unmistakably  in 
the  elaborate  construction  of  the  divine  nature  in  his  Philos- 
ophy of  Religion.  What  Hegel  is  really  doing,  of  course, 
or  intending  to  do,  is  to  emphasize  the  truth  that  if  we  start 
reflectively  with  a  One,  we  find  that  it  inevitably  involves  a 
Many,  for  it  is  only  as  the  unity  of  a  multiplicity  that  you 
know  it  as  one;  or,  similarly,  the  idea  of  subject  implies  an 
object  of  which  it  is  conscious — through  which  alone  it  can 
be  a  subject.  In  the  world  of  reality,  therefore,  there  is  no 
possibility  of  a  start  with  a  mere  One  or  a  mere  subject,  for 
these  are  the  abstractions  of  reflective  analysis.  The 
Hegelian  principle  of  logical  implication  is,  in  short,  when 
applied  to  the  case  of  God  and  the  world,  the  demonstration 
of  the  very  principle  of  eternal  creation  for  which  we  have 
contended.  God  exists  as  creatively  realizing  himself  in  the 
world,  just  as  the  true  Infinite  is  not  a  mere  Beyond,  but  is 
present  in  the  finite  as  its  sustaining  and  including  life^ 
Hence  Hegel's  recurring  polemic  against  the  God  of  Deism, 
whom  he  styles,  in  so  many  words,  the  unknown  God.  And 
yet,  adopting  for  his  own  purposes  the  old  Platonic  idea  of 
the  Logos,  as  developed  by  Alexandrian  and  Christian  think- 
ers into  the  doctrine  of  a  trinity  in  the  divine  nature,  he  is 
led  in  the  course  of  his  exposition,  not  infrequently,  to  use 
expressions  which  involuntarily  recall  the  old  conception  of 
a  succession  of  stages  in  the  divine  reality — what  Janet  calls 
'  periods  in  the  divine  life  '.  He  tells  us,  for  example,  that 
'  the  starting-point  and  point  of  departure  '  is  '  the  abso- 
lutely undivided  self-sufficing  One';  or,  again,  'Eternal 
Being,  in  and  for  itself,  is  something  which  unfolds  itself, 
determines  itself,  differentiates  itself,  posits  itself  as  its  own 
difference  V  In  the  same  sense  he  speaks  of  '  the  advance  of 
the  Idea  to  manifestation  '.  The  constant  use  of  the  term 
'  posit '  in  this  connexion,  and  the  recurring  expression 
1  Philosophy  of  Religion,  vol.  iii,  p.  35  (English  translation). 


xvi        HEGEL  AND  THE  ALEXANDRIANS        313 
\ 

'  diremption  ',  have  the  same  suggestion  of  the  bare  subject 
producing  its  object  or  of  the  pre-existing  unit  opening  itself 
out  into  a  multiplicity.  Philosophical  reflection  on  the 
implications  of  thought  is  hypostatizcd  in  such  passages 
into  an  actual  process  generative  of  reality. 

This  deceptive  priority  finds,  of  course,  striking  expres- 
sion in  the  historical  doctrine  with  which  Hegel  connects  his 
philosophical  exposition,  the  eternally  begotten  Son  of  the 
Father.  If  we  recognize  that  we  are  not  talking  here  of  two 
separate  individuals,  two  Gods,  then  the  origination  of  the 
one  by  the  other,  even  when  stated  to  be  an  eternal  act,  is 
plainly  a  figure  of  speech.  The  Father,  in  theological  lan- 
guage, knows  himself  in  the  Son,  that  is  to  say,  the  Son  is 
the  object  without  which  a  divine  self -consciousness  were 
impossible.  Or,  again,  we  are  told,  God  utters  himself,  first 
becomes  articulate,  in  the  Son,  who  is  called  on  that  account, 
the  Word.  But  there  is  no  existence  of  God  at  all  with- 
out self-consciousness,  without  such  self -articulation.  The 
Father  consequently,  if  conceived  even  ideally  as  prior,  is 
simply  the  abstraction  of  the  empty  subject;  and,  as  handled 
in  the  metaphysical  creeds,  the  idea  may  be  said  to  represent 
the  inveterate  tendency  of  our  thought  to  try  to  get  beyond 
or  behind  the  ultimate,  to  project  a  more  abstract  God 
behind  the  living  God,  as  somehow  bringing  the  latter  into 
being.  This  is  still  more  apparent  in  the  form  in  which  the 
doctrine  first  specifically  appeared  in  Philo  of  Alexandria. 
To  Philo  the  Logos  is  expressly  '  the  second  God  ',  and,  as 
immanent,  is  knowable;  but  God  himself,  or  the  transcend- 
ent Deity,  is  exalted  above  determination  by  any  of  the 
predicates  known  to  finite  intelligence.  He  is  OTTTOZ.??.  The 

n          ,  -^ -^  ° 

kindred  speculations  of  the  Neo-Platonists  show  us  the  same 
tendency  and  the  same  result.  Plotinus  teaches  that  Mind, 
as  already  containing  plurality  in  its  unity,  must  have  come 
forth  from  the  One,  which  precedes  all  thought  and  being1. 
Proclus,  who  devises  an  intermediate  principle  to  bridge 


3i4  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

the  gulf  between  the  two,  describes  the  transcendent  Source 
as  a   principle   in   its   nature   completely   ineffable    (gyrtj 

And  Scutus  Krigena,  the  Western  inheritor 


of  their  philosophy,  declares  that  '  on  account  of  his  super- 
eminence  God  may  not  improperly  be  called  Nothing  V 
Thus  thought,  grasping  at  the  transcendent,  and  seeking 
something  more  real  than  reality,  overleaps  itself  and  falls 
into  the  abyss  of  absolute  nothingness.  '  Abyss,'  indeed,  was 
one  of  the  names  which  the  Gnostics  gave  to  this  imaginary 
prius  of  the  rational  cosmos. 

God,  then,  becomes  an  abstraction  if  separated  from  the 
universe  of  his  manifestation,  just  as  the  finite   subjects 


have  no  independent  subsistence  outside  of  the  universal 
Life  which  mediates  itself  to  them  in  a  world  of  objects. 
We  may  conceive  God  as  an  experience  in  which  the  uni- 
verse is  felt  and  apprehended  as  an  ultimately  harmonious 
whole;  and  we  must,  of  course,  distinguish  between  such 
an  infinite  experience  and  the  experiences  of  ourselves  and 
other  finite  persons.  But  we  have  no  right  to  treat  either 
out  of  relation  to  the  other.  We  have  no  right  to  suppose 
the  possibility  of  such  an  infinite  experience  as  a  solitary 
monad  —  an  absolute,  in  the  old  sense  of  the  term  already 
condemned,  self-sufficient  and  entirely  independent  of  the 
finite  intelligences  to  whom,  in  the  actual  world  which  we 
know,  it  freely  communicates  itself.  Coleridge,  it  is  true, 
represents  this  as  the  fundamental  difference  between 
Spinozism  and  the  Christian  scheme,  that  whereas  to  Spinoza 
the  world  without  God  and  God  without  the  world  are  boti 

1  In  Meister  Eckhart,  the  devout  mystic,  there  is  a  similar  distinction 
between  '  God  ',  the  knowable  Creator,  and  the  original  ground,  beyond 
Being  and  Knowledge,  which  he  calls  '  the  Godhead  ',  and  which  he  also 
characterizes  by  predilection  as  the  Nothing,  or  '  unnatured  nature  ',  not 
only  unknown  and  unknowable  to  man,  but  unknown  also  to  itself.  The 
Godhead,  as  he  says  in  the  extremity  of  his  paradox,  dwells  in  the  noth- 
ing of  nothing  which  was  before  nothing,  and  it  is  apprehended  only  in 
the  knowledge  that  is  a  not-knowing.  (The  passage  is  quoted  in 
Ueberweg's  History  of  Philosophy,  vol.  i,  p.  474,  English  translation.) 


xvi  GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  315 

alike  impossible  ideas  (W—  G^oandG  —  W=o),  for  Chris- 
tian thought  the  world  without  God  is  likewise  an  impos- 
sibility, but  God  without  the  world  is  the  self-subsistent 
(W— G^o,  but  G—  W=G).  I  may  quote  in  reply  the 
comment  of  my  old  teacher,  on  this  ingenious  play  of  sym- 
bols. '  This  is  applicable  to  the  Christian  scheme  only  as 
popularly  understood,'  comments  Fraser,  '  not  a  few  though- 
ful  Christians  holding  by  the  absolute  correlation  of  God  and 
the  world  as  an  inference  necessarily  deducible  from  the  ' 
moral  nature  or  personality  of  God.' 1  '  We  may  not  take  for  f 
granted  ',  he  says  again,  '  that  the  Divine  Source  of  the  life 
in  which  we  now  are,  is  not  eternally  the  Source  of  light  and 
life  to  intelligences,  active  and  responsible  for  their  actions, 
like  ourselves.' 2  Creation,  in  short,  if  it  is  taken  to  mean 
anything  akin  to  efficient  causation,  is  totally  unfitted  to 
express  any  relation  that  can  exist  between  spirits.  Spirits 
cannot  be  regarded  as  things  made,  detached  like  products 
from  their  maker;  they  are  more  aptly  described,  in  the 
Biblical  phrase,  as  '  partakers  of  the  divine  nature  '  and 
admitted  to  the  fellowship  of  a  common  life.  But  if  so, 
there  can  be  no  ground  for  the  supposition  of  a  pre-existent 
Deity,  not  yet  crowned  with  the  highest  attribute  of  Good- 
ness or  self -revealing  Love.  God's  '  glory  '  (in  the  theologi- 
cal phrase  already  referred  to)  is  not  something  adventitious, 
subsequently  added  to  the  mode  of  his  existence;  it  is  as 
eternal  as  his  being.  The  divine  life  is  essentially,  I  have 
contended,  this  process  of  self-communication.  Or,  to  put  it 
in  more  abstract  philosophical  language,  the  infinite  in  and 
through  the  finite,  the  finite  in  and  through  the  infinite — this 
mutual  implication  is  the  ultimate  fact  of  the  universe  as 
we  know  it.  It  is  the  eternal  fashion  of  the  cosmic  Lifei 

How  is  such  a  position  distinguishable,  it  may  be  asked, 
from  the  Pluralism  advocated  by  thinkers  like  Professor 

1  Essay  on  '  M.   Saisset  and   Spinoza ',  North  British  Review,  vol. 
xxxviii,  p.  463.  2  Ibid.,  p.  487. 


316  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

Howison  or  Dr.  McTaggart?  In  denying  any  priority  of 
the  infinite  to  the  finite,  our  view  seems  in  danger  of  attrib- 
uting an  independent  reality  to  the  latter,  and  thus  resolving 
the  universe  into  a  collection  of  self-subsistent  individuals. 
That  is,  in  fact,  the  conclusion  at  which  Professor  Howison 
arrives,  in  revulsion  from  a  Monism  which,  by  making  the 
Absolute  the  sole  determining  agent  in  whatever  happens, 
leaves  no  place  in  its  scheme  for  the  existence  of  self-active 
moral  persons.  Now  it  is  the  essential  postulate  of  morality, 
as  we  have  ourselves  seen,  that  the  acts  of  the  self-conscious 
individual  are  his  own  acts,  not  to  be  fathered  on  any  '  nature 
of  things  ',  and  that  every  self-conscious  being  is  in  this  sense 
a  free  and  originative  source  of  activity.  But,  says  Pro- 
fessor Howison,  '  no  being  that  arises  out  of  efficient  causa- 
tion can  possibly  be  free.  .  .  .  Not  even  Divine  agency  can 
give  rise  to  another  self-active  intelligence  by  any  productive 
act.'  And  therefore  he  concludes  to  '  an  eternal  Pluralism  ' 
— a  '  society  of  minds  '  or  '  circle  of  self-thinking  spirits  ',  in 
which  God  is  indeed  '  the  central  member  '  but  '  only  as 
primus  inter  pares '.  '  The  members  of  this  Eternal  Repub- 
lic have  no  origin  but  their  purely  logical  one  of  reference 
to  each  other.  .  .  .  They  simply  are,  and  together  constitute 
the  eternal  order.' l 

With  all  that  Professor  Howison  says  about  '  thinking 
in  terms  of  spirit '  and  discarding  the  '  old  efficient-causal 
notion  of  Divine  being  and  function  ',  I  feel  the  greatest 
sympathy,  as  also  with  his  insistence  on  what  he  rather 
happily  terms  the  inherent '  sourcefulness  '  of  self-conscious- 
ness. I  have  also  already  adverted  to  the  contradiction 
which  appears  to  be  involved  in  the  origin  of  a  self.  Such 
origin  is  inconceivable  as  the  result  of  action  from  without, 
and  hence  the  self  appears  to  us  as  its  own  creation ;  but  to 
make  it  the  result  of  its  own  action  is  obviously  to  presup- 

1  The  Limits  of  Evolution  and  other  Essays  illustrating  the  Meta- 
physical Theory  of  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  332-4,  289,  277,  256,  359,  337. 


xvi  AN  '  ETERNAL  REPUBLIC  '  317 

pose  the  very  existence  we  are  seeking  to  explain.  Never- 
theless, every  child  which  grows  to  manhood  exemplifies 
anew  the  fact  of  origination  which  we  find  it  so  difficult  to 
formulate.  And  again,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  we 
cannot  get  behind  the  '  sourceful '  Ego,  and  therefore  none 
of  us  can  imagine  either  a  beginning  or  an  end  of  his  exist- 
ence ;  the  knowing  self  seems  as  eternal  as  the  universe.  Yet 
this  apparent  eternity  of  the  intellect  is  combined  in  our 
experience  with  a  conviction  of  utter  dependence;  for  which 
of  us,  as  Descartes  asks,  feels  himself  able  to  guarantee  his 
own  continuance  in  existence  from  one  moment  to  another? 
I  cannot  agree,  then,  that  because  a  self  is  a  genuine  source 
of  activity,  it  is  therefore  necessarily  eternal  and  self-sub- 
sistent.  Nor  do  I  think  that  Professor  Howison's  too  sub- 
jectively Kantian  view  of  the  a  priori  legislative  function  of 
the  mind  in  the  '  making '  of  Nature  can  be  regarded,  even 
if  it  were  true,  as  a  convincing  proof  of  the  thesis  for  which 
he  is  arguing.  Professor  Howison  does  not  hesitate  to 
speak  of  man  and  other  finite  intelligences  as  '  nature-beget- 
ting minds  '.  We  are  '  ourselves  the  causal  sources  of  the 
perceived  world  and  its  cosmic  order ' ;  '  the  laws  of  nature 
must  issue  from  the  free  actor  himself,  and  upon  a  world 
consisting  of  states  of  his  own  consciousness,  a  world  in  so 
far  of  his  own  making.'  He  makes  a  point,  indeed,  of  this 
'  Pluralistic  Idealism ',  as  contrasted  with  '  the  idealistic 
monism  that  has  so  long  dominated  philosophical  theism  '. 
'  Not  God  only,  but  also  the  entire  world  of  free  minds  other 
than  God,  must  condition  Nature.'  In  fact,  the  finite  minds 
are  alone  '  directly  and  productively  causal  of  it,  while 
God's  conditioning  of  it  can  only  be  indirect  and  remote; 
namely,  by  the  constant  reference  to  him  which  these  nature- 
begetting  minds  spontaneously  have  V 

But  surely  under  cover  of  this  indirect  causation — this 
constant  reference  to  a  divine  centre — we  give  the  whole 
1  Ibid.,  pp.  302,  325-6. 


318  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

pluralistic  case  away.  We  are  reinstating  in  such  phrases 
the  objective  system  of  nature — the  common  world — of 
which  the  independent  action  of  so  many  individual  minds 
offers  no  manner  of  guarantee.  Professor  Howison  tells  us 
that  the  finite  minds  '  spontaneously  have  '  this  reference, 
and  he  talks  elsewhere  of  '  the  benign  consensus  of  the  whole 
society  of  minds  V  But  if  we  are  not  to  treat  such  a  con- 
sensus as  the  miraculous  result  of  chance,  what  other  expla- 
nation of  it  can  we  give  than  that  the  plurality  is  based  upon 
a  deeper  unity  of  system?  Professor  Howison's  scheme 
appears  to  work  only  because  he  postulates  an  identical 
content  or  system  of  reason  common  to  all  his  self -active 
intelligences.  The  society  of  which  he  speaks  is  described 
by  himself  as  '  a  universal  rational  society  ',  or,  more  ex- 
plicitly still,  as  '  an  association  of  beings  united  by  a  common 
rational  intelligence  '.  This  community  of  nature  extends 
not  only  to  the  abstract  categories  of  the  pure  intellect,  but 
also  to  the  governing  conceptions  of  ethical  and  aesthetic 
experience.  Speaking  of  God  and  human  souls,  he  says, '  As 
complete  reason  is  his  essence,  so  is  reason  their  essence — 
their  nature  in  the  large — whatever  may  be  the  varying 
conditions  under  which  their  selfhood,  the  required  pecu- 
liarity of  each,  may  bring  it  to  appear.  Each  of  them  has 
its  own  ideal  of  its  own  being,  namely,  its  own  way  of  ful- 
filling the  character  of  God.  .  .  .  Moreover,  since  this  ideal, 
seen  eternally  in  God,  is  the  chosen  goal  of  every  conscious- 
ness, it  is  the  final — not  the  efficient — cause  of  the  whole 
existing  self.'  The  relations  between  the  Divine  and  the 
human  indicated  by  such  phrases  as  a  common  essence  and 
an  immanent  ideal 2  are  of  a  character  so  intimate  and  so 
unique  as  to  make  the  metaphor  of  a  '  republic  ' — the  whole 


1  p.  276. 

2  PP-  339-4O.    Cf.  Preface,  p.  xxx.    '  The  theistic  ideal  of  God  imma- 
nent in  the  world  by  the  activity  of  his  image  in  the  mind  of  Man,  the 
only  Divine  Immanence  compatible  with  the  moral  freedom  of  the  soul.' 


xvi  PLURALITY  BASED  ON  DEEPER  UNITY  319 

idea  of  an  association  of  independent  individuals — totally 
inapplicable  to  the  facts. 

I  think  I  understand  the  motives  of  Professor  Howison's 
insistence  on  a  certain  equality  of  status  among  all  persons, 
as  such,  consequently  even  as  between  the  human  self  and 
God.  He  has  clearly  perceived  that  a  self-conscious  being 
is,  by  his  very  nature,  raised  above  the  sphere  of  efficient 
causality  as  that  operates  in  a  world  of  things.  Such  a  being 
is  inaccessible  to  force  or  action  from  without :  nothing  can 
be  effected  in  a  self  except  through  the  personal  will  of  the 
agent  himself.  A  person  cannot  be  coerced,  he  can  only  be 
persuaded;  and  if  he  is  effectually  persuaded,  his  decision 
becomes  the  expression  of  his  whole  nature.  Short  of  such 
ratification  we  have  gained  nothing,  for,  as  the  adage  has  it, 
a  man  convinced  against  his  will  is  of  the  same  opinion  still. 
In  such  a  sphere,  then,  the  only  causation  is  final  causation, 
the  causation  of  the  ideal,  as  it  is  expressed  in  Aristotle's 
doctrine  of  the  prime  mover,  or  again,  in  the  language  of 
Christianity, '  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all 
men  unto  myself  '.  '  Hence  the  divine  love  ',  as  Professor 
Howison  happily  puts  it,  '  is  a  love  which  holds  the  individu- 
ality, the  personal  initiative  of  its  object  sacred.  .  .  .  The 
Father  of  Spirits  will  have  his  image  brought  forth  in  every 
one  of  his  offspring  by  the  thought  and  conviction  of  each 
soul  itself.  .  .  .  [Accordingly]  the  moral  government  of 
God,  springing  from  the  Divine  Love,  is  a  government  by 
moral  agencies  purely.  .  .  .  Leaving  aside  all  the  juridical 
enginery  of  reward  and  punishment,  it  lets  his  sun  shine  and 
his  rain  fall  alike  on  the  just  and  the  unjust,  that  the  cause 
of  God  may  everywhere  win  simply  upon  its  merits.' 1  This 
central  conception  of  the  inviolable  nature  of  personality  is 
likewise  the  gist  of  the  phrase  of  which  Professor  Howison 
makes  important  use,  both  in  the  careful  summary  of  doc- 
trine prefixed  to  his  book  and  elsewhere — '  the  mutual 

1  pp.  257-8. 


320  THE  IDEA  OF  CREATION  LECT. 

recognition  of  all  minds '.  '  This  mutual  recognition  is 
involved  ',  he  says,  '  in  the  self-defining  act  by  which  each 
subsists,  and  is  the  condition  of  their  co-existence  as  a  moral 
order.'  But  it  holds  not  only  between  one  finite  spirit  and 
another;  it  characterizes  equally,  as  we  have  just  seen,  the 
divine  attitude  to  the  human  self.  In  truth  the  moral  recog- 
nition of  the  world  of  spirits  by  God  is  the  intelligible  mean- 
ing of  the  metaphor  of  creation,  and  it  is  an  eternal  act  or 
fact,  Professor  Howison  urges,  which  is  the  expression  of 
His  own  nature  as  a  perfect  moral  being.1 

With  such  a  statement  of  the  case  I  have  not  much  fault 
to  find;  it  is,  indeed,  practically  identical  with  the  concep- 
tion of  creation  which  we  have  ourselves  adopted.  But  it  is 
pluralism  only  so  far  as  it  is  a  protest  against  the  completely 
non-ethical  idea  of  God  as  a  solitary  unit.  The  notion  of 
God  is  indeed  inseparable  from  that  of  a  spiritual  commu- 
nity. But  so  long  as  we  apply  the  terms  infinite  and  perfect 
to  God  and  speak  of  Him,  with  Professor  Howison,  as  '  the 
fulfilled  Type  of  every  mind  and  the  living  Bond  of  their 
union  ',  such  a  view  is  misrepresented  by  phrases  which  seem 
to  make  God  one  individual  mind  among  a  number  of  equally 
self-subsistent  individuals,  which  '  spontaneously  ',  but  inex- 
plicably, coincide  in  certain  characteristics  and  in  certain 
ideals.  However  impious  and  intolerable  one  may  feel  the 
image  of  the  potter  and  the  clay,  however  certain  one  may 
be  that  the  integrity  of  the  self-conscious  being  is  involved 
in  the  very  perfection  of  the  divine  nature,  still  the  relation 
between  the  finite  spirit  and  its  inspiring  source  must  be,  in 
the  end,  incapable  of  statement  in  terms  of  the  relation  of 
one  finite  individual  to  another.  To  treat  God  as  no  more 
than  primus  inter  pares  is  to  lose  touch  both  with  speculation 
and  religion.  Professor  Howison,  in  the  phrases  to  which  I 

1  Preface,  pp.  xiii-xvii.  Cf.  p.  355 :  '  An  absolutely  perfect  mind,  or 
God,  whose  very  perfection  lies  in  his  giving  complete  recognition  to  all 
other  spirits,  as  the  complement  in  terms  of  which  alone  his  own  self- 
definition  is  to  himself  completely  thinkable.' 


xvi  '  PRIMUS  INTER  PARES  '  321 

refer,  seems  to  use  the  idea  of  self-consciousness  entirely  as 
a  principle  of  separation  and  exclusion,  which  finitizes  even 
what  he  calls  '  the  Supreme  Instance  ',  the  '  absolutely  per- 
fect mind,  or  God '.  Substantiating  the  selves  in  their 
mutual  exclusiveness,  he  is  further  led  to  insist  on  the  essen- 
tial eternity  of  every  self  as  such,  and  to  represent  the 
universe  as  consisting  of  a  definite  number  of  such  perma- 
nent finite  souls  plus  God.  With  consequences  like  these, 
however,  we  pass  from  philosophical  theism  to  a  real  plural- 
ism, such  as  is  more  consistently  represented  by  Dr.  McTag- 
gart's  atheistic  Absolute  or  by  the  doctrine  of  a  finite  God. 
The  discussion  of  such  theories,  so  far  as  it  is  called  for 
after  the  establishment  of  our  general  position,  falls  in 
another  place. 


LECTURE  XVII 
TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE 

THE  idea  of  Purpose  meets  us  in  all  the  ordinary  theologi- 
cal accounts  of  the  relation  of  God  to  the  world  of  finite 
things  and  persons;  while  philosophers  are  often  found 
contending  that  the  contrast  between  a  teleological  and 
a  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe  is  the  most  radical  of 
philosophical  distinctions,  and  that  a  spiritual  view  of  the 
world  stands  or  falls  with  a  teleological  interpretation.  We 
have  seen,  in  the  opening  lecture,  the  central  position 
assigned  by  Hume  to  the  '  argument  from  design  '  in  its 
older  form.  Although,  as  a  philosopher,  he  denies  its  coer- 
cive force,  yet  Philo,  speaking  to  Cleanthes  as  man  to  man, 
frankly  admits  the  difficulty  of  escaping  from  it.  '  In  many 
views  of  the  universe  and  of  its  parts,  particularly  the 
latter,  the  beauty  and  fitness  of  final  causes  strikes  us  with 
such  irresistible  force,  that  all  objections  appear  (what 
I  believe  they  really  are)  cavils  and  sophisms.'  In  very 
similar  terms  Kant,  in  his  classical  criticism  of  the  tradi- 
tional proofs  of  the  existence  of  God,  although  he  exposes 
the  limitations  of  the  argument,  refers  to  it  as  '  the  oldest, 
the  clearest,  and  that  most  in  harmony  with  the  common 
reason  of  mankind'.  .Purposive  activity  is,  indeed,  the 
central  feature  of  our  human  experience ;  reason  seems  to 
operate  in  that  experience  characteristically  under  the  form 
of  End.  Nevertheless  there  are  manifest  difficulties  in 
transferring  the  conception  of  Purpose  or  End  to  the  action, 
if  we  may  so  call  it,  of  the  Absolute,  and  in  using  it  to 
describe  the  relation  existing  between  God  and  the  world 


xvii  THE  IDEA  OF  PURPOSE  323 

\of  his  creatures.  These  difficulties  have  been  so  pressed 
by  thinkers  of  the  first  rank  that  it  is  incumbent  upon  us 
to  examine  carefully  whether  the  teleological  point  of  view 
can  be  maintained  in  such  a  reference,  and,  if  so,  in  what 
.sense  precisely  the  affirmation  of  Purpose  is  to  be  under- 
stood. Certain  features  of  finite  purpose,  it  is  to  be  pre- 
sumed, must  fall  away;  but  when  these  are  dropped,  there 
may  still  remain  a  fundamental  attitude  of  will  (perhaps 
even  of  desire)  which  cannot  be  more  fitly  designated  in 
mortal  speech  than  by  the  time-honoured  category  of  End  or 
Purpose. 

It  will,  I  think,  again  be  convenient  if  I  connect  the  dis- 
cussion with  Professor  Bosanquet's  treatment  of  the  same 
subject ; 1  for  although  in  the  opening  or  programme  lecture 
of  his  first  Gifford  course  he  lays  it  down  that  '  a  Teleology 
cannot  be  ultimate  ',2  and  returns  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
volume  to  repeat  the  position  that  '  it  seems  unintelligible 
for  the  Absolute  or  for  any  perfect  experience  to  be  a  will 
or  purpose  ',  he  will  be  found,  in  a  later  handling  of  the 
subject,  endeavouring  to  make  room  in  his  final  conception 
for  the  essential  core  of  the  idea  which  he  had  rejected. 

The  idea  of  Purpose,  as  we  meet  it  in  experience,  appears 
to  imply  (i)  desire  for  an  as  yet  non-existent  state  of 
affairs,  (2)  the  conception  of  a  plan  for  bringing  the  desired 
state  of  affairs  into  existence  by  selection  of  appropriate 
means,  (3)  the  act  of  will  proper,  which  realizes  or  carries 
out  this  plan.  The  final  stage  or  aspect  of  the  process  may 
involve  move  or  less  difficulty,  but  it  seems  in  any  case  to; 
involve  the  adaptation  of  means  to  an  end.  Purpose  in; 
this  sense  is  thus  essentially  a  feature  of  a  life  in  time,  and 
also,  it  would  seem,  characteristic  of  a  finite  individual  in 

1  Especially  in  Individuality  and  Value,  Lecture  IV,  '  The  Teleology 
of  Finite  Consciousness '.    Cf.  Appendix  I  to  Lecture  X,  pp.  391-3. 

2  p.  16.    In  the  lecture  devoted  to  the  subject  he  begins  with  a  disparag- 
ing reference  to  '  that  popular  principle  of  ethical  and  theistic  idealism 
known  in  general  as  Teleology '. 


324    TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

^an  orderly  universe  where  connexion  of  means  and  end  can 
,be  ascertained  and  relied  upon.  There  is  no  reason,  in  short, 
to  object  to  Professor  Bosanquet's  description  of  '  de  facto 
purpose  '  as  '  a  psychological,  temporal,  and  ethical  idea  V 
Our  question,  then,  is,  Do  these  features  of  the  idea  dis- 
qualify it  utterly  as  a  principle  of  cosmic  interpretation? 
Some  of  them  we  easily  recognize  as  inapplicable  in  such 
a  sphere.  But  because  the  conception  is  derived,  like  all 
our  ideas,  from  the  facts  of  our  own  experience,  is  it  there- 
fore essentially  or  exclusively  a  finite  category  ?  We  have 
argued  in  these  lectures  throughout  from  the  structure  of 
experience,  and  it  has  been  my  contention  that  no  other  pro- 
cedure is  reasonable  or  possible.  In  the  case,  then,  of  an  idea 
so  central  a«  that  of  purpose,  may  we  not  expect  that,  when 
purged  of  demonstrably  finite  accompaniments,  it  will  still 
help  us  to  characterize  truly  the  nature  of  the  infinite 
Experience  ? 

Familiar  criticisms  of  '  the  argument  from  design '  already 
indicate  some  of  the  features  of  finite  activity  which  must 
be  eliminated  in  speaking  of  a  divine  purpose.  Thus  the 
idea  of  contrivance — the  skilful  adjustment  of  means  to 
end — so  prominent  in  the  traditional  form  of  that  argument, 
evidently  implies  a  pre-existing  or  independently  existing 
material  whose  capabilities  limit  and  condition  the  realizing 
activity.  At  most,  therefore,  the  proof  would  yield  us,  as 
Kant  points  out,  an  architect  of  the  world,  a  kind  of 
demiurge,  '  not  a  creator  to  whom  all  things  are  subject '. 
J.  S.  Mill  puts  the  same  point  more  strongly :  '  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  every  indication  of  design  in  the  cosmos 
is  so  much  evidence  against  the  omnipotence  of  the  designer. 
.  .  .  Wisdom  and  contrivance  are  shown  in  overcoming 
difficulties,  and  there  is  no  room  for  them  in  a  Being  for 
whom  no  difficulties  exist.  The  evidences  therefore  of 
Natural  Theology  distinctly  imply  that  the  author  of  the 
1  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  217. 


xvii         THE  ARGUMENT  FROM  DESIGN          325 

cosmos  worked  under  limitations:  that  he  was  obliged  to 
adapt  himself  to  conditions  independent  of  his  will  and  tu 
attain  his  ends  by  such  arrangements  as  those  conditions 
admitted  of.'  *  And,  as  is  well  known,  this  dualistic  posi- 
tion was  the  solution  which  Mill  was  on  the  whole  inclined 
to  adopt.  In  truth  the  traditional  form  of  the  argument 
seems  to  represent  the  Creator  as  originating  a  material 
which  has  no  relation  to  his  purposes — which  has  no  forma- 
tive nisus  in  itself — and  which  has  therefore  to  be  moulded 
into  "accordance  with  his  ends,  and  directed  in  its  course, 
by  a  supplementary  exhibition  of  the  divine  wisdom.  ^£t  is. 
as  if  the  existence  of  the  material  were  referred  simply  to 
the  divine  power — treated  as  a  result  of  the  fiat  of  omnipo- 
tence— the  superinduction  of  order  and  plan  being  a  subse- 
quent operation  of  the  divine  wisdom,  specially  calculated 
to  serve  as  a  proof  of  the  divine  existence.  But  apart  from 
the  criticism  that  this  comes  perilously  near  to  creating  diffi- 
culties in  order  to  solve  them  with  credit,  it  is  obviously 
inadmissible  to  treat  matter  and  form  in  this  way  as  initially 
unrelated  to  one  another.  Yet  it  is  this  contingent  relation 
which  forms  the  nerve  of  the  argument  from  design,  as 
Kant  three  times  emphasizes  in  the  course  of  his  short  state- 
ment. '  This  arrangement  of  means  and  ends  is  entirely 
foreign  to  the  things  existing  in  the  world — it  belongs  to 
them  merely  as  a  contingent  attribute.'  So  Janet  writes 
more  recently :  '  What  essentially  constitutes  finality  is  that 
the  relation  of  the  parts  to  the  whole  is  contingent:  it  is 
just  this  that  is  finality.'  Janet  goes  on  to  imply  that  the 
alternative  to  such  finality  is  '  blind  necessity  '.  '  If  it  be 
admitted  that  matter,  obeying  necessary  laws,  must  perforce 
take  the  form  of  an  organism  fit  for  a  certain  function, 
the  idea  of  finality  must  be  sacrificed  and  only  blind  neces- 
sity be  admitted.' 2  And  Kant  similarly  indicates  that  the 

1  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  pp.  176-7. 
1  Final  Causes,  pp.  436-7. 


326     TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

argument  depends  on  the  contrast  between  '  a  free  and 
intelligent  cause  '  and  '  a  blind  all-powerful  nature,  produc- 
ing the  beings  and  events  which  fill  the  world  in  unconscious 
fecundity  '. 

But,  on  fuller  reflection,  can  anything  be  more  illegiti- 
mate than  to  treat  one  stage  of  the  divine  action  as  essentially 
unrelated  to  those  which  are  to  follow — to  substantiate 
mechanism  or,  in  Janet's  phrase,  '  nature  obeying  necessary 
laws ',  as  if  it  were  in  no  sense  the  vehicle  or  medium  of 
the  divine  manifestation  but  almost  a  rival  and  hostile 
power,  so  that  whatever  mechanism  can  do  is  not  '  of  God  ' 
but  the  outcome  of  '  blind  necessity '.  We  cannot  treat 
the  substructure  of  the  universe  in  this  way  as  going  by 
itself,  and  introduce  purposive  intelligence  at  a  later  stage 
to  effect  more  delicate  adjustments  and  shape  the  cosmos 
towards  its  finer  issues.  The  process  of  the  universe — and 
we  are  looking  at  it  now  as  a  process — must  be  taken  as  a 
whole,  in  which  the  spirit  of  the.  whole  is  everywhere 
present.  Hence,  the  strong  emphasis  which  Professor 
Bosanquet  lays  on  the  principle  of  continuity  commands 
our  sympathy,  even  although  it  seems  to  lead  him  to  cham- 
pion mechanism  against  teleology,  and  makes  him  express 
his  conclusions  at  times  in  an  almost  naturalistic  form.  As 
he  points  out,  '  the  processes  of  inorganic  nature  are  physi- 
cally continuous  with  and  essential  to  the  processes  of  life, 
and  if  the  latter  are  teleological,  the  former  can  hardly  be 
less  so.  ...  Much  of  the  work  done  by  inorganic  forces, 
e.  g.  the  change  of  rock  into  soil,  are  obvious  conditions 
of  the  adaptation  of  the  earth  to  life.  .  .  .  The  continuity 
of  the  earth's  geological  structure  with  social  and  historical 
teleology  is  obvious.  They  plainly  and  essentially  belong 
to  the  same  process.'  Taking  the  case  of  a  flower,  he  indi- 
cates the  two  extremes  we  have  to  avoid.  '  On  the  one 
hand  it  is  ridiculous  to  say  that  such  a  product  arises  by 
accident;  that  is,  as  a  by-product  of  the  interaction  of 


xvii    NATURAL  SELECTION  AND  PURPOSE    327 

elements  in  whose  nature  and  general  laws  of  combination 
no  such  result  is  immanent.'  On  the  other  hand,  we  must 
not  ascribe  to  the  flower  '  an  end  or  idea  somehow  super- 
induced upon  the  course  of  [its]  elements  by  a  power 
comparable  to  finite  consciousness,  operating  as  it  were 
ab  extra  and  out  of  a  detached  spontaneity  of  its  own.  .  .  . 
In  the  structure  and  being  of  the  flower  the  natural  elements 
behave  according  to  what  they  are.'  But  '  we  must  inter- 
pret the  nature  of  nature  as  much  by  the  flower  as  by  the 
law  of  gravitation  '.1 

This  is  the  position  so  strongly  insisted  on  throughout 
our  first  series  of  lectures,  more  especially  in  dealing  with 
the  phenomenon  of  life;  and  the  modern  theory  of  organic 
development  seems  to  me  strikingly  to  support  such  a  view. 
Much  controversy,  of  a  more  or  less  intelligent  kind,  has 
raged  round  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  the  argument 
from  design.  Many  have  proclaimed  on  the  housetops  that 
the  idea  of  purpose  has  been  definitively  exploded  by  the 
modern  theory  of  natural  selection;  while  others  have  con- 
tended that  the  evolutionary  process  does  but  broaden  and 
deepen  the  conception  of  a  cosmic  teleology.  The  scientific 
doctrine,  or,  one  may  quite  fairly  say,  the  scientific  facts,  '/ 
do,  it  seems  to  me,  deal  a  fatal  blow  to  the  '  artificer  '  idea,2 
whjch  is  the  pivot  of  the  argument  from  design  in  its  familiar 
form.  The  eye  certainly  suggests  the  idea  of  special  con- 
trivance more  forcibly,  if  we  look  simply  at  the  complex 
and  delicate  mechanism  of  the  perfected  organ  in  the  higher 
animals,  than  if  we  view  its  structure  as  a  gradual  refine- 
ment, through  countless  intermediate  stages,  upon  the 
pigment  spots  which  serve  some  of  the  lowest  organisms 
to  discriminate  roughly  between  light  and  darkness.  But 


1  Cf.  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  146-9. 

2  Dr.  Chalmers  in  his  Natural  Theology  refers  the  origin  of  organic 
structure  to  '  the  finger  of  an  artificer ' — the  direct  '  fiat  and  interposi- 
tion of  a  God'  (Institutes  of  Theology,  vol.  i,  pp.  79-81). 


328     TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

to  bring  in  the  operation  of  natural  selection  through 
environmental  conditions,  and  to  regard  an  organ  as  thus 
fashioned  from  rude  beginnings  by  the  cumulative  action 
of  such  factors  in  the  past,  is  not  to  eliminate  teleology. 
Rather,  by  relating  the  development  of  the  organ  to  the 
general  course  of  things,  it  is  to  bring  both  organ  and 
environment  within  the  scope  of  one  '  increasing  purpose '. 
This  was  clearly  put  by  Huxley  as  early  as  1869  in  criticiz- 
ing the  youthful  extravagances  of  Haeckel.  '  No  doubt  it 
is  quite  true  ',  he  says,  '  that  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  is 
the  most  formidable  opponent  of  all  the  commoner  and 
coarser  forms  of  Teleology.  But  perhaps  the  most  remark- 
able service  to  the  philosophy  of  Biology  rendered  by  Mr. 
Darwin  is  the  reconciliation  of  Teleology  and  Morphology, 
and  the  explanation  of  the  facts  of  both  which  his  views 
offer.' ' 

The  modern  scientific  view  thus  tends  to  coincide  with  the 
ideal  outlined  by  Kant  at  the  close  of  the  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason — '  the  systematic  unity  of  nature  ',  conceived  as 
'  complete  teleological  unity.' 2  This  ideal,  'jessentially  and 
indissolubly  connected  with  the  nature  of  our  reason  and 
prescribing  the  very  law  of  its  operation  ',3  impels  us  '  to 
regard  all  order  in  the  world  as  if  it  originated  from  the 

1  Collected  Essays,  vol.  ii,  '  Darwiniana ',  p.  109.  Cf .  Professor  Asa 
Gray's  statement :  '  Let  us  recognize  Darwin's  great  service  to  natural 
science  in  bringing  back  to  it  Teleology:  so  that  instead  of  Morphology 
versus  Teleology,  we  shall  have  Morphology  wedded  to  Teleology ' 
(quoted  in  Darwin's  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  ii,  p.  189),  and  the  statement 
of  Francis  Darwin  (in  the  same  volume,  p.  255)  :  'One  of  the  greatest 
services  rendered  by  my  father  to  the  study  of  natural  history  is  the 
revival  of  Teleology.  The  evolutionist  studies  the  purpose  or  meaning 
of  organs  with  the  zeal  of  the  older  teleology  but  with  far  wider  and 
more  coherent  purpose.  He  has  the  invigorating  knowledge  that  he  is 
gaining  not  isolated  conceptions  of  the  economy  of  the  present,  but  a 
coherent  view  of  both  past  and  present.' 

1  Vollstandige  sweckmdssige  Einheit. 

*  Gesetsgebend.  Or,  as  he  otherwise  expresses  it,  this  unity  is  '  not 
merely  an  economical  device  of  reason,  of  hypothetical  validity.  Reason 
here  does  not  request  but  demand.' 


xvii  '  THE  SYSTEMATIC  UNITY  OF  NATURE  '  329 

intention  and  design  of  a  supreme  reason  '.  But,  as  he  wisely 
adds,  '  the  agency  of  a  Supreme  Being  is  not  to  be  invoked 
by  a  species  of  ignava  ratio  to  explain  particular  phenomena, 
instead  of  investigating  their  causes  in  the  general  mechan- 
ism of  matter.  This  is  to  consider  the  labour  of  reason 
ended  when  we  have  merely  dispensed  with  its  employment, 
which  is  guided  surely  and  safely  only  by  the  order  of  nature 
and  the  series  of  changes  in  the  world — which  are  arranged 
according  to  immanent  and  general  laws.  This  error  may  be 
avoided  if  we  do  no t  merely  consider  certain  parts  of  nature 
from  the  point  of  view  of  finality,  such  as  the  division  and 
structure  of  a  continent,  the  constitution  and  direction  of 
certain  mountain  chains,  or  even  the  organization  existing 
in  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  but  look  upon  this 
systematic  unity  of  nature  in  a  perfectly  general  way  in  rela- 
tion to  the  idea  of  a  Supreme  Intelligence.  If  we  pursue 
this  advice,  ...  we  possess  a  regulative  principle  of  the 
systematic  unity  of  a  teleological  connexion,  which  we  do  not 
attempt  to  anticipate  or  predetermine.'  '  We  cannot ',  he 
repeats, '  overlook  the  general  laws  of  nature  and  regard  this 
conformity  to  aims  observable  in  nature  as  contingent  or 
hyperphysical  in  its  origin.  .  .  .  The  whole  aim  of  this 
regulative  principle  is  the  discovery  of  a  necessary  and  sys- 
tematic unity  in  nature,  and  hence,  when  we  have  discovered 
such  a  unity,  it  should  be  perfectly  indifferent  whether  we 
say  God  has  wisely  willed  it  so  or  nature  has  wisely  arranged 
this.' 

The  whole  ideal  thus  sketched  constitutes  an  emphatic 
repudiation,  on  Kant's  part,  of  what  he  had  himself  signal- 
ized as  characteristic  of  the  old  argument — the  view  of 
purpose  as  external  and  contingent,  super-induced  upon  the 
facts  and  manifested  only  in  particular  contrivances  of 
nature.  Kant  transfers  the  idea  of  purpose  to  the  whole  as  a 
systematic  and  intelligible  unity.  And  in  applying  his  princi- 
ples, in  the  Critique  of  Judgment,  to  the  special  case  of  the 


330    TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

organism,  he  points  out  that  it  is  just  because  the  peculiar 
unity  which  characterizes  such  a  whole  and  its  members 
appears  to  us  contingent  with  reference  to  the  general  laws 
of  matter,  that  we  seek  to  explain  it  by  a  pre-conceived  plan 
tor  purpose,  that  is  to  say,  by  the  idea  of  the  whole  in  some 
mind  prior  to  the  actual  existence  of  the  whole  in  question. 
But  this  mode  of  explanation,  he  repeatedly  suggests,  may 
well  be  due  to  the  nature  of  pur  understanding  which,  as  a 
faculty  of  notions,  dependent  upon  sensibility  for  its 
material,  proceeds  always  from  the  parts  to  the  whole,  and 
consequently  regards  the  connexion  of  the  parts  in  that 
particular  fashion  as  contingent.  '  We  can,  however,  con- 
ceive of  an  understanding,  not  discursive  like  ours  but  intui- 
tive, which  proceeds  from  a  synthetical  universal  (the 
intuition  of  a  whole  as  such)  to  the  particular,  i.  e.  from 
whole  to  parts.'  Such  an  understanding  would  see  '  the 
possibility  of  the  parts  as  dependent  on  the  whole  in  regard 
to  both  their  specific  nature  and  their  interconnexion  '. 
Here,  therefore,  there  would  be  no  such  separation  as  we 
popularly  make  between  means  and  end  ;  the  whole  would 
not  appear  as  an  end,  and  the  parts  as  means  adapted  to 
realize  it.  The  relation  of  means  and  end  in  the  ordinary 
,  sense  would  vanish  ;  for  the  whole  would  appear  as  the  nec- 
:  essary  unity  of  its  members,  and  the  members  as  the  neces- 
sary differentiation  of  the  whole.  Hence  Kant  holds  that  the 
mechanical  and  the  teleological  explanation  of  the  facts 
are  not  ultimately  contradictory,  although  the  teleological 
remains  the  final  or  inclusive  point  of  view. 


analyse  our  real  meaning  in  the  light  of  Kant's  suggestion, 
„  we  see  clearly  that,  in  attributing  purposiveness  to  the  uni- 
verse or  any  lesser  whole,  what  we  are  concerned  about  is  the 
^character  of  the  reality  in  question  and  not  the  pre-existence 
of  a  plan  of  it  in  anybody's  mind.  A  teleological  view  of  the 
universe  means  the  belief  that  reality  is  a  significant  whole. 
When  teleology  in  this  sense  is  opposed  to  a  purely  mechani- 


xvii       REALITY  A  SIGNIFICANT  WHOLE         331 

cal  theory,  it  means  substantially  the  assertion  of  _an  intelli- 
gible whole  as  against  the  idea  of  reality  as  a  mere  aggregate 
or  collocation  of  independent  facts.  When  Trendelenburg,1 
for  example,  speaks  of  the  teleologists  as  asserting  the  pri- 
ority of  thought,  and  their  opponents  the  priority  of  what 
he  calls  blind  force,  what  he  means  by  such  priority  is  not 
a  bare  mind  existing  first  and  calling  matter  into  being,  but 
simply  the  inherently  intelligible  nature  of  reality.  Accord- 
ing to  his  own  illustration,  the  universe  has  not  chanced  on 
its  present  apparently  intelligible  structure  as  the  result  of 
infinite  castings  of  the  cosmic  dice,  much  as  the  Iliad  or  the 
tragedy  of  Hamlet  might  be  supposed  to  be  a  collocation  of 
letters  accidentally  arrived  at  in  the  course  of  infinite 
shufflings  of  the  alphabetic  symbols.  ^Rationality  is  not  a 
Jucky  accident  of  this  description;  it  is  the  fundamental 
feature  of  the  world.  Intelligibility,  as  we  actually  discover 
it,  and  as  we  everywhere  presume  it,  means  that  the  world 
is  the  expression  or  embodiment  of  thought.  In  this  sense 
mens  agitat  molem ;  reason  is  present  at  every  stage  as  the 
shaping  spirit  of  the  whole. 

If  we  discard,  accordingly,  in  a  cosmic  reference  the  idea 
of  a  preconceived  plan  and  the  whole  conception  of  contri- 
vance or  skill  in  the  overcoming  of  difficulties,  with  the 
separation  of  means  and  end  which  it  involves,  we  seem 
furnished  with  an  answer  to  another  of  Professor  Bosan- 
quet's  criticisms,  namely,  that  teleology,  '  in  the  sense  of 
aiming  at  the  unfulfilled,  gives  an  unreal  importance  to  time 
.  and  to  the  part  of  any  whole — it  may  be  a  relatively  trivial 
part — which  happens  to  come  last  in  succession '.  Toj)ro- 
claim  the  End  as  the  true  principle  of  explanation,  we  may 
reply,  is  no  more  than  to  insist,  in  Hegel's  phrase,  that  the 
True  is  the  Whole.  Taken  from  the  point  of  view  of  proc- 
ess, the  principle  says  '^ajjjjgjyjjeissue  ',  see  what  it  all  comes 

1  In  his  essay,   Ueber  den  letsten   Unterschied  der  philosophischen 
Systeme. 


332     TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

to.  Do  not  attempt  to  thrust  things  back  upon  their  first 
beginnings,  or  try  to  take  these  beginnings  out  of  relation  to 
what  has  followed  from  them.  It  is  the  characteristic  of 
Naturalism  thus  to  substantiate  the  antecedents  in  abstrac- 
tion from  their  consequents.  But,  as  I  have  already  insisted, 
the  true  nature  of  the  antecedents,  that  is  to  say,  of  the 
apparent  cause,  is  revealed  only  in  the  effects;  and  in  this 
sense  all  ultimate  or  philosophical  explanation  must  look  to 
the  end.  Obviously,  to  such  a  teleology  it  is  not  the  tempo- 
ral sequence  which  is  the  important  thing.  The  end,  indeed, 
must  not  be  taken  in  abstraction  any  more  than  the  beginning ; 
it  must  not  be  severed  from  the  process  of  its  realization. 
The  last  term  is  only  important  because  in  it  is  most  fully 
revealed  the  nature  of  the  principle  which  is  present  through- 
out. It  is  precisely  this  linkage  of  the  first  term  with  the 
last  and,  to  that  extent,  the  transcendence  of  the  mere  time- 
sequence  in  the  conception  of  an  eternal  reality,  that  seems 
to  me  to  be  expressed  by  the  profound  Aristotelian  idea  of 
r&o?  or  End. 

But  it  is  plain,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  argues,  that^^tjja. 
idea  of  Purpose  or  End,  when  we  thus  divest  it  of  its  finite 
^incidents,  tends  to  pass  into  that  of  Value.  It  is,  as  I  have 
already  said,  the  character  of  the  whole  which  we  have  in 
view — not  the  historical  fact  of  its  having  been  purposed,  but 
.its  nature  as  something  worthy  of  being  purposed,  something 
.fit,  in  short,  to  be  the  End  of  a  Perfect  Being.  And  it  is  in 
harmony  with  this  sense  of  the  term  that  theologians  are 
wont  to  speak  of  the  fundamental  features  of  the  universe 
as ^ the  eternal  purpose'  of  God,  And  the  same  sense  re- 
appears in  the  test  case  of  Spinoza's  system,  which  appar- 
ently strides  across  the  historical  antithesis  of  mechanism 
and  teleology.  Spinoza  passionately  denounces  the  meta- 
physical use  of  the  idea  of  Purpose  or  End,  and  appears 
therefore  as  the  defender  of  mechanical  necessity.  But  it 
would  be  a  strange  ruling  which  refused  to  see  in  Spinoza's 


xvii  THE  IDEA  OF  SATISFACTION  333 

system  one  of  the  great  presentations  of  philosophical  ideal- 
ism. After  all,  it  is  an  external  teleology,  and  especially 
a  teleology  too  narrowly  centred  in  man,  which  Spinoza 
repudiates,  and  for  which  he  substitutes  the^  idea^QljL Jjfil.f .- 
.realizing  system.  And  Spinoza's  necessity,  we  must  remem- 
ber, jis  always  the  necessity  of  the  divine  nature,  that  is  to 
say,  jt  is  the  expression  of  the  nature  of  the  whole.  We  shall 
not  do  justice  to  his  thought,  therefore,  unless  we  interpret  it 
in  the  light  of  his  goal  rather  than  in  the  light  of  his  starting- 
point — not  by  the  formal  definition  of  God  as  Substance  but 
by  the  amor  intellectualis  Dei  with  which  he  closes,  the..intel- 
lectual  love  of  the  mind  towards  God,  which  is  part  of  the 
.infinite  love  with  which  God  loves  himself.  Spinoza's  con- 
clusion brings  into  full  light  the  element  which  we  have  just 
found  to  be  the  essential  characteristic  of  the  teleological 
conception.  From  the  ultimate  stage  of  philosophical  in- 
sight, at  which  the  mind  realizes  the  system  of  the  whole 
and  its  own  oneness  with  God,  there  springs,  says  Spinoza, 
'.summa,  quae  dari  potest,  mentis  acquiescentia,  hoc  est  lae- 
titla ' ;  and  beatitudo  is  the  note  upon  which  he  closes. 
Acquiescentia — the  highest  contentment  of  mind,  Pollock 
translates ;  acceptance  as  good,  we  might  say.  It  is  the 
human  echo  of  the  verdict  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  divine 
Labourer — •'  And  God  saw  everything  that  he  had  made,  and 
behold  it  was  very  good.'  Or  again,  Spinoza  says,  this 
'  acquiescence  '  is  not  really  distinguished  from  '  glory  '.  In 
this  striking  array  of  terms  there  is  the  same  undertone  of 
mystical  exaltation  as  in  Plato's  famous  words  at  the  close 
of  the  Timaeus,  in  which  he  celebrates  the  world  he 
has  described  as  'a  god  perceptible,  greatest,  best,  fair- 
est and  most  perfect,  the  one  only-begotten  universe '. 
In  these  terms  Spinoza  enshrines  his  conviction  that  the 
world  is  not  only  one,  but  it  is  good :  it  is  not  only  a 
system  which  we  can  understand,  but  one  with  which  we  can 
identify  ourselves,  and  obtain  thereby  the  highest  satis fac- 


334    TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE    LECT. 

tion  of  which  our  nature  is  capable.    This  idea  of  satisfac- 
^tion  forms  an  integral  part  of  any  teleological  view  of  the 
t  universe.    The  conception  of  a  realized  purpose  involves  the 
idea  that  the  end  is  something  worthy  of  attainment,  an 
achievement  in  which  the  rational  being  can  see  the  fulfil- 
ment, and  far  more  than  the  fulfilment,  of  '  all  the  main 
tendencies  of  his  nature  V 

We  meet  here  again,  in  short, _the  idea  of  value  to  which  so 
much  prominence  was  given  in  the  first  series  of  lectures  and 
also  in  the  earlier  lectures  of  the  present  series.  The  idea  is 
sometimes,  I  think,  obscured  in  Hegelian  arguments  by  the 
exclusive  stress  laid  on  the  idea  of  unity  and  system.  A 
principle  of  unity — the  phrase  which  occurs  so  often  in 
Caird  for  example — is  in  the  end  as  bald  and  abstract  a 
description  of  God  or  the  Absolute  as  the  much-derided 
'  Being  '  or  '  Substance  '  of  earlier  philosophies.  Hegel's 
own  statements,  in  dealing  with  this  very  subject  of  teleol- 
ogy, also  weary  us  by  their  persistent  harking  back  to  the 
fundamental  formula  of  the  One  and  the  Many  or  identity 
in  difference.  But  it  is  not  any  whole  or  system,  any  many- 
in-one,  as  such,  which  is  capable  of  being  looked  at  philo- 
sophically as  an  End.  Such  phrases,  unless  we  read  into 
them  a  specific  content  from  our  own  experience,  suggest  no 
more  than  fitting  together  the  parts  of  some  intellectual  puz- 
zle. We  have  already  seen,2  in  criticizing  Mr.  Bradley's  and 
Professor  Bosanquet's  formulation  of  the  principle  of  value, 
how  both  these  writers  are  obliged  in  practice  to  supplement 
the  purely  logical  criteria  of  inclusiveness  and  non-contra- 
diction by  reference  to  '  the  provinces  of  experience  which 
comprise  the  various  values  of  life  ',3  or,  still  more  explicitly, 
to  '  our  main  wants — for  truth  and  life  and  for  beauty  and 
goodness  '.*  The  importance  of  the  idea  of  purpose  anfl  its 

1  Mr.  Bradley's  phrase. 

3  In  Lecture  XII,  on  '  The  Criterion  of  Value '. 
*  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  268. 
'Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  158. 


xvn  CONATION  AND  VALUE  335 

correlate,  satisfaction,  is  that  they  recall  us  to  the  aspects  of 
jfeeling  and  will,  which  are  ^incontestable  marks  of  any  experi- 
ence known  to  us,  and  apart  from  which  value  is  an  unmean- 
ing phrase.  Value  in  some  theories  is  specially  connected  with 
the  facts  of  feeling,  but  satisfaction  means  more  than  can  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  pleasure  and  pain,  considered  merely 
as  passive  states  of  the  soul.  ..Satisfaction  is  inseparable 
.from  conation,  and  successful  conation  is  the  self-fulfilment  • 
of  the  creature.  In  its  highest  form,  such  conation  meanr 
realized  purpose,  and  the  supreme  values  are  those  whicl 
represent  the  realization  of  our  most  sustained  purposes  anc 
the  satisfaction  of  our  deepest  and  most  permanent  desires. 
Value,  it  is  not  too. much  to  say^ becomes  an  abstractioi 
when  dissociated  from  the  idea  of  purpose  and  realization.! 

But  do  not  all  these  ideas  bring  us  back,  it  may  stfl 
urged,  to  the  region  of  finite  effort?  If  purpose  implies  the 
ideas  of  conation  and  satisfaction,  can  we  apply  such  a  con- 
ception to  reality  as  a  whole  without  exposing  ourselves  to 
Spinoza's  criticism  that  it  implies  defect  in  God,  and  explains 
his  activity  as  a  means  to  remove  that  defect,  or  to  achieve 
a  perfection  which  he  previously  did  not  possess?  This 
fundamental  difficulty  is  faced  by  Professor  Bosanquet  at 
the  close  of  his  contribution  to  an  instructive  Symposium  on 
Purpose  and  Mechanism,1  of  a  later  date  than  his  Gifford. 
Lectures;  and  his  suggestions  towards  a  solution,  if  admit- 
tedly vague,  seem  to  me,  as  coming  from  him,  of  unusual 
interest.  In  the  Gifford  volume,  as  we  have  seen,  he  appears, 
both  at  the  outset  and  at  the  close,  to  reject  the  whole  tele- 
ological  point  of  view  as  applied  to  the  Absolute.  But  in 
the  lecture  specifically  devoted  to  the  subject  we  find  him 
acknowledging  (or  rather  contending  for)  a  '  teleology  bft-t 
low  consciousness  '  and  a  '  teleology  above  finite  conscious- 
ness '.  ^Nature/  in  short,  '  below  conscious  intelligence  and 
Providence,  if  we  like  to  call  it  so,  above,  can  achieve  without 

1  Published  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  1911-12. 


336     TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

the  help  of  a  relevant  explicit  consciousness,  results  of  the 
same  general  type  as  those  which  are  ascribed  to  the  guidance 
of  conscious  minds.' 1  It  is  not,  therefore,  the  purposiveness 
of  the  whole  which  he  denies,  but  the  ascription  of  that  pur- 
posiveness exclusively  to  the  conscious  guidance  of  finite 
individuals  or  of  a  God  individualistically  and  externally 
conceived.  In  the  more  recent  discussion  to  which  I  have 
referred,  he  proposes,  in  order  to  make  this  position  plainer, 
to  use  teleology  as  a  third  term  distinct  both  from  mechanism 
on  the  one  hand  and  purpose  on  the  other,  purpose  being  now 
identified  with  what  he  had  called  in  his  lectures  '  the  tele- 
ology of  finite  consciousness  '.  '^Teleology  ',  he  says  in  this 
symposium,  'jis_a  character  applicable  to  the  universe,  is  got 
at  primarily  by  freeing  the  idea  of  end  from  some  incidents 
of  finite  purpose  which  cannot  apply  to  a  true  whole.'  But, 
he  proceeds  (and  this  is  the  point  of  interest  to  which  I 
alluded),  does  teleology  in  this  cosmic  application  '  transcend 
finite  purpose  in  every  way  ?  Or  must  not,  as  we  anticipated 
at  starting,  some  special  characters  of  finite  purpose  be 
carried  on  into  teleology  and  establish  a  kinship  between  the 
two  ?  In  other  words,  are  we  not  to  unite  the  conative  atti- 
tude and  the  correlative  idea  of  satisfaction?  Now,  to  unite 
conation  with  accomplished  fruition — with  the  idea  of  a 
whole  in  which  end  and  process  are  one — is  not  easy ;  on  the 
other  hand,  to  separate  perfection  from  value,  and  value 
from  satisfaction,  and  satisfaction  from  a  conative  attitude, 
is  also  not  easy.'  '  The  difficulty  begins  ',  he  adds,  '  when 
you  attempt  to  explain  to  whom  the  perfect  whole  is  to  be 
satisfactory ' ;  and  he  is  so  impressed  by  this  difficulty  that 
he  attempts  to  get  round  it  by  substituting  the  term  satis- 
factoriness  for  satisfaction.  *  I  believe  that  value  lies  deeper, 
and  is  not  conferred  by  de  facto  satisfying  a  conation,  but  is 
in  satis factoriness  rather  than  satisfaction — in  the  character 
of  completeness  and  positive  non-contradiction  which  gives 

1  pp.  145, 153-4. 


xvii  SATISFACTORY  TO  WHOM?  337 

the  power  to  satisfy  conations,  because  it  belongs  to  what 
unites  all  reality  in  itself/ 

But  surely  this  is  an  evasion  of  the  difficulty,  not  a  solu- 
tion ;  for  why  is  anything  called  satisfactory,  unless  because 
it  satisfies  some  one?  The  same  question  therefore  arises — 
satisfactory  to  whom?  The  suggestion  would  seem  to  be 
that  the  satisfaction  is  experienced  distributively  by  indi- 
vidual finite  beings.  And  that  is  no  doubt  an  element  in 
the  case,  for,  after  all,  it  is  we  who  pronounce  those  judge- 
ments of  ultimate  value,  and  apart  from  such  human  valua- 
tions we  possess  no  magical  access  to  the  secrets  of  the 
Absolute.  But  it  is  precisely  because,  in  such  judgements, 
there  is  no  question  of  the  realization  of  any  merely  indi- 
vidual or  selfish  purpose,  or  of  any  number  of  finite  purposes,  / 
that  we  are  prepared  to  stake  our  all  upon  them.  We 
should  not  experience  the  satisfaction,  if  we  did  not  believe 
.that  we  were  iudging^Mfc  sJifcie..  univexji  or  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  whole.  Our  finite  judgements,  therefore,  seem 
to  postulate  a  satisfaction  of  the  Absolute  itself,  if  I  may 
so  put  it,  which  as  heirs  of  reason  ^f^  frSSfTI?1?  flf  thA_ 
universe  we  are  capable  of  sharing.  But  in  substituting 
satisfactoriness  for  satisfaction,  and  then  translating  satis- 
factoriness  into  purely  logical  characteristics,  Professor 
Bosanquet  seems  to  yield  to  the  subtle  temptation  to  _. 
,detach  the  content  and  structure  of  truth,  as  logic  does, 
from  the  concrete  whole  in  which  it  is  enjoyed,  and  to  treat 
it  as  a  self-existent  entity.  But  the  abstraction  which  is 
permissible  and  intelligible  in  logic  or  in  any  special  science 
becomes  meaningless  in  metaphysics.  In  an  ultimate  account 
of  things,  the  logical  criteria  themselves — completeness,  har- 
mony, coherence,  any  term  we  like  to  use — imply,  as  much 
as  any  ethical  or  aesthetical  criterion,  the  reference  to  a 
.conscious  experience  appreciative  of  value.  Because  it  is 
purged  of  all  private  by-ends  and  selfish  interests,  we  some- 
times think  of  truth  as  typically  impersonal,  but  Aristotle's 


338     TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

account  of  the  divine  felicity  is  sufficient  to  remind  us  that 
truth  is  not  a  logical  abstraction  but  a  supreme  value. 

The  point  which  interests  me,  however,  is  that,  in  the 
end,  Professor  Bosanquet  refuses  to  surrender  the  idea  of 
satisfaction  which  he  had  seemed  inclined  to  give  up  on 
account  of  its  difficulty.  The  sentence  which  I  have  criti- 
cized is  not,  in  point  of  fact,  consistent  with  what  he  imme- 
diately goes  on  to  say :  it  seems  to  reflect  a  temporary  dis- 
couragement. In  the  very  next  sentence  he  reiterates  the 
conviction  which  gave  rise  to  the  difficulty.  '  Yet ',  he 
says,  '  in  the  purposiveness  which  is  perfect  and  inclusive 
satisfaction,  something  must  remain  which  represents  the 
facts  of  conation.'  Or,  as  he  puts  it  in  the  following  sen- 
tence still  more  strikingly,  '  the  contradiction  of  a  conation 
co-existing  with  fruition  must  be  realized  V  '  This  is  not 

fthe  place  ',  he  adds,  '  to  offer  suggestions  how  this  can  be, 
but  the  singularly  intimate  unity  which  characterizes  the 
teleological  whole  must  be  distinguished  from  the  abstract 
unity  of  mechanism  by  something  akin  to  a  conation  of  all 
towards  all,  though  its  timeless  unity  seems  a  meeting  of 
extremes  with  the  mechanical  ideal.' 

The  realization  of  a  contradiction  is  a  strange  phrase  on 
Professor  Bosanquet's  lips,  but  the  paradoxes  or  apparent 
contradictions  of  religious  thought  have  often  been  remarked 
on.  A  recent  writer  2  has  observed  in  that  connexion  that, 
'  at  our  level  of  thought,  the  inclusion  of  an  element  of  con- 
tradiction seems  to  be  a  sign  of  reality  and  of  largeness  of 
view  rather  than  of  error  '.  The  paradox  of  religion  may  be 
truer,  in  short,  than  the  dilemma,  the  '  Either-or  ',  of  the 
logical  understanding.  So  it  may  be  here  in  dealing  with 

1  In  the  Appendix  to  Individuality  and  Value,  in  the  immediate  con- 
text of  the  statement  that  '  it  seems  unintelligible  for  the  Absolute  or 
for  any  perfect  experience  to  be  a  will  or  purpose ',  he  adds,  '  To  say 
that  the  reality  as  a  whole  may  contain  an  untold  number  of  finite  pur- 
poses, and  must  itself  include  a  satisfaction  in  which  purpose  and  ful- 
filment are  one,  is  another  thing '. 

1  W.  H.  Moberly  in  Foundations,  p.  520. 


xvii  SPINOZA'S  DENIALS  339 

the  conception  of  an  absolute  experience.  It  seems  at  least 
certain  that  if  nothing  remains  in  that  experience  to  repre- 
sent the  facts  of  conation  and  fruition,  the  Absolute  is 
assimilated,  as  it  is  in  Spinoza's  formal  theory,  or  as  it  some- 
times appears  to  be  in  Hegel,  to  a  timeless  system  of  abstract 
truth,  or,  as  Professor  Bosanquet  here  suggests,  it  becomes 
indistinguishable  from  '  the  mechanical  ideal '.  If  we  return 
for  a  moment  to  consider  what  is  true  and  what  is  false  in 
Spinoza's  denials,  it  may  serve  to  illuminate  our  conclusion. 
He  denies  both  intellzctus  and  voluntas  to  God.  But  his 
fierce  polemic  against  '  absoluta  voluntas  '  must  be  taken  as 
his  protest  against  transferring  the  idea  of  choice  to  a  sphere 
where  it  is  inapplicable,  and  thus  founding  the  universe  and 
its  constitution  upon  a  groundless  act,  upon  the  abstraction 
of  contentless  will.  And  this  protest  must  be  emphatically 
sustained.  When  he  denies  voluntas  to  God,  it  is  this  free- 
dom of  choice  which  he  means,  and  when  he  denies  intellectus 

JL\.  is  the  schematic  and  partial  knowledge  of  things  from 
the  outside,  the  knowledge  which  proceeds  by  the  piecing 
together  of  parts  and  the  inferring  of  the  unknown  from 
the  known — intellect,  the  deviser  of  means  towards  ends,  of 
plans  of  action  for  the  satisfaction  of  wants — it  is  this 
characteristically  finite  procedure  which  he  refuses  to  carry 
over  into  his  conception  of  the  divine  nature  or  the  divine 
activity.  And  again  it  is  obvious  that  the  refusal  is  just. 
And  yet  there  is  a  danger  in  Spinoza's  denials ;  for  although 
the  discursive  and  scheming  intellect  is  rightly  denied,  intebi 

,  ligence  in  some  larger,  directer  form — of  which  we  may!'" 
have  hints  and  anticipations  in  our  own  experience — must 
be  affirmed,  if  we  are  not  to  treat  that  which  is  highest; 
as  lower  than  ourselves,  and  to  assimilate  it  to  unconscious 
nature.    And  with  intelligence  goes  will,  not  as  a  meaning- 

!M»*^HHH^MHHMMI>|N^MMI*M*IM**M**a|MMiMMHMMMMMMMttM» 

less  freedom  of  choice  but  in  the  sense  of  continuously 
affirming  and  possessing  one's  experience,  which  is  the 
characteristic,  or  at  least  the  ideal,  of  the  se.lf-gonscious 


340    TELEOLOGY  AS  COSMIC  PRINCIPLE     LECT. 

individual.  So  far  as  Spinoza  appears  to  deny  these  char- 
acteristics to  his  ultimate  Individual,  he  abandons  the  prin- 
ciple of  interpretation  by  the  highest  we  know,  and  in  that 
case,  or  so  far  as  he  does  so,  necessity,  even  the  necessity 
of  the  divine  nature,  tends  to  suggest  not  the  inwardly 
affirmed  movement  and  rhythm  of  a  concrete  experience  or 
life,  but  a  kind  of  abstract  destiny  imposed  on  the  universe. 
It  is  the  idea  of  the  divine  necessity  as  a  self-affirmed  life, 
.and  not  as  a  blind  force  acting  within  the  universe  like  a 
fate  which  it  undergoes,  that  constitutes  the  differentia 
between  a  theistic  and  a  non-theistic  doctrine. 

The  terms  we  have  just  used,  however,  do  not  carry  us, 
of  themselves,  beyond  the  contemplative  felicity  of  Aris- 
totle's eternal  thinker.  But  if  we  revise  our  idea  of  perfec- 
tion— if  \ve  keep  in  view  the  conclusion  to  which  we  were  led 
in  the  two  preceding  lectures,  and  definitively  abandon  the 
conception  of  God  as  a  changeless  and  self-sufficient  unit — 
the  movement  to  the  finite  and  the  realization  of  the  infinite 
in  the  finite  must  be  taken  as  the  fundamental  character 
of  the  divine  life.  And  if  so,  what  term  could  be  devised 
more  fitting  to  describe  the  relation  of  the  time-world  and 
its  process  to  the  divine  totality  than  to  speak  of  it  as  '4kf 
eternal  purpose  '  of  God?  Like  every  term  of  our  mortal 
speech,  it  retains  the  associations  of  time.  The  End  appears 
as  a  '  far-off  divine  event ',  a  consummation  delayed;  and 
beyond  doubt  the  finite  point  of  view  cannot  be  transferred 
literally  to  an  Absolute  Experience.  But  so  far  as  the 
ideas  of  process  and  ultimate  achievement  embody  the  con- 
ception of  effort — nay,  of  difficulty — they  may  be  accepted 
as  truer  to  the  great  Fact  of  the  universe  than  the  language 
even  of  a  philosopher  like  Hegel  when  he  speaks  of  the 
Absolute  Life  as  the  eternal  play  of  love  with  itself.1  In 

1  Philosophy  of  Religion.  I  am,  of  course,  well  aware  that  at  other 
times  Hegel  emphasizes  the  element  of  strain  in  the  cosmos.  Many 
passages  might  be  quoted- 


xvii  ACTIVITY  AND  PURPOSE  341 

short,  if  the  finite  world  means  anything  to  God,  the  ideas 
of  activity  and  purpose  are  indispensable.  If  he  is  not 
himself  active  in  the  process,  he  is  no  more  than  the 
Eternal  Dreamer,  and  the  whole  time-world  becomes  the 
illusion  which  many  absolutist  systems  pronounce  it  to  be. 
Founding,  as  I  do,  on  the  verities  of  the  spiritual  life,  it 
would  be  waste  of  time  for  me,  at  the  stage  we  have  now 
reached,  to  combat  such  a  view.  But  the  relation  of  the 
temporal  to  the  eternal  is  so  old  a  metaphysical  problem,  and 
one  so  much  in  the  foreground  at  present,  that  it  demands 
consideration  in  a  special  lecture. 


LECTURE  XVIII 
TIME  AND  ETERNITY 

IT  was  the  apparent  inseparability  of  the  idea  of  Purpose 
from  the  future  or  the  '  not-yet '  that  constituted  the  diffi- 
culty in  applying  it  to  the  action  of  the  Absolute  or  to  the 
universe  as  a  whole.  We  are  thus  led  directly  to  a  more 
general  consideration  of  the  problem  of  Time  in  its  relation 
to  the  Absolute,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  otherwise  expressed, 
the  question  of  the  ultimate  reality  or  unreality  of  Time. 
Adopting  Plato's  figure  of  the  successive  waves  of  a  philo- 
sophic argument,  we  may  well  say  that  this  is  the  most 
mountainous  and  formidable  of  the  breakers  we  have  to 
encounter.  Greek  speculation  in  any  profounder  sense  may 
be  said  to  have  begun,  in  Heraclitus  and  Parmenides,  with 
the  problem  of  time  and  change;  and  the  same  problem  is 
the  fundamental  issue  in  the  latest  contemporary  philoso- 
phies of  Mr.  Bradley  and  M.  Bergson.  '  Nothing  perfect, 
nothing  genuinely  real,  can  move,'  says  Mr.  Bradley,1  utter- 
ing in  one  weighty  Parmenidean  phrase  the  burden  and  the 
underlying  assumption  of  his  whole  philosophy;  while  dura- 
tion, as  we  know,  is  to  M.  Bergson,  in  his  own  words,  '^the 
very  stuff  of  reality  '.2  The  persistence  of  the  problem  need 
not  surprise  us  if,  as  Professor  Royce  says,3  '  any  rational 
decision  as  between  a  pessimistic  and  an  optimistic  view  of 
the  world,  any  account  of  the  relation  between  God  and 
Man,  any  view  of  the  sense  in  which  the  evils  and  imperfec- 
tions of  the  universe  can  be  comprehended  or  justified,  in 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  500.    So  again,  p.  270,  '  Jn  any  case  there 
is  no  history  or  progress  in  the  Absolute '. 
1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  287. 
'  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  ii,  p.  112. 


xvm          THREE  SENSES  OF  ETERNITY          343 

brief,  any  philosophical  reconciliation  with  religion  and  life, 
^must  turn  in  part  upon  a  distinction  between  Jhe  Temporal 
and  the  Eternal,  and  upon  an  insight  into  their  unity  in 
the  midst  of  their  contrast '.  '  A  philosophical  position  ', 
says  Professor  Bosanquet  in  the  same  spirit,  '  is  definitely 
characterized  by  the  attitude  adopted  to  the  course  of 
time.'1 

Nothing  is  perhaps  more  remarkable,  if  we  consider  the 
intimacy  and  the  omnipresence  of  the  experience  ofjchange. 
than  the  general  refusal  of  speculative  and,  it  may  be  added, 
of  religious  thought,  to  regard  this  universal  characteristic 
of  human  experience  as  an  ultimate  predicate  of  reality. 
The  phenomenon  is  all  the  stranger  seeing  that,  from  the 
nature  of  the  situation,  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  emancipate 
ourselves  from  the  temporal  way  of  thinking  and  speaking ; 
and,  consequently,  despite  our  best  endeavours,  we  can 
only  describe  the  supposed  timeless  or  eternal  reality  by 
analogies  and  metaphors  borrowed  from  our  time-experi- 
ence. 

In  the  latest  philosophical  encyclopaedia  the  article 
'  Eternity ' 2  distinguishes  three  main  senses  in  which  the 
term  is  employed  :  ( i )  to  denote  an  unending  extent  of  time, 
(2)  to  denote  that  which  is  essentially  timeless,  and  (3)  to 
_  denote  that  which  includes  time  but  somehow  transcends  it.3 
The  first  is  the  popular  idea,  taking  its  stand  on  the  ordinary 
conception  of  time  without  trying  to  transform  it  in  any 
way,  but  simply  extending  it  quantitatively — adding  more 
time  at  both  ends.  The  helplessness  with  which  this  end- 
less progress  and  regress  afflicts  the  mind,  the  contradictions 
in  which  it  involves  us,  if  it  is  offered  as  a  final  statement 

1  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.  291. 

3  By  Professor  J.  S.  Mackenzie  in  Dr.  Hastings's  Encyclopaedia,  of 
Religion  and  Ethics. 

s  Similarly,  Dr.  McTaggart  notes  '  three  distinct  senses :  to  denote 
unending  time,  to  denote  the  timelessness  of  truths,  and  .to  denote  the 
timelessness  of  existences  '  (in  an  article  on  '  The  Relation  of  Time  and 
Eternity',  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xviii,  p.  343). 


344  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

of  the  nature  of  existence,  have  led  many  philosophers  to 
insist  on  the.  essentially  t  timeless  nature  of  reality.  They 
speak  as  if  the  time-view  of  the  world  were  a  pure  illusion, 
embodying  no  characteristic  feature  of  the  universe,  and 
therefore  simply  to  be  set  aside  in  any  attempt  at  an  ulti- 
mate statement.  But  although  this  may  be  a  natural  revul- 
sion from  the  popular  conception,  it  is,  I  propose  to  argue, 
an  over-statement,  which  is  entirely  contrary  to  sound  prin- 
ciples of  interpretation,  and  which  necessarily  lands  us  in 
a  false  position.  The  eternal  is  not  timeless  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  might  say  that  moral  qualities  are  not  spatial 
magnitudes;  the  eternal  and  the  temporal  are  essentially 
correlative  conceptions,  so  that  it  is  only  through  the  char- 
acteristic features  of  time — through  some  transformation 
of  these  features — that  we  can  form  any  intelligible  con- 
ception of  the  eternal.  That  is  the  principle  of  interpreta- 
tion which  we  have  followed  throughout.  Appearances  are 
our  only  clue  to  the  nature  of  reality.  It  is  in  developing 
what  we  find  there,  not  in  passing  away  from  it  and  con- 
demning it  as  illusion,  that  we  may  hope  to  form  some 
conception  of  an  absolute  or  perfect  life.  If  we  adopt  the 
other  method,  we  pass,  of  necessity,  into  the  region  of  the 
completely  unknown,  where  we  can  only  speak  in  negatives. 
The  third  sense  of  the  term  mentioned  by  the  writer  of  the 
article  seems  therefore  the  direction  in  which  we  should 
look  for  a  solution  of  our  difficulties. 
j.  The  second  sense,  absolute  timelessness,  to  which  perhaps 
the  term  timeless  might  be  most  fitly  restricted,  covers  the 
timelessness  which  is  commonly  said  to  belong  to  truths, 
or  laws,  or  a  conceptual  system.  The  knowledge  of  any 
truth  is,  of  course,  an  event  in  time ;  it  is  part  of  the  history 
of  some  mind.  Or,  if  the  contemplation  of  a  system  of 
truths  is  supposed  to  be  the  occupation  in  which  a  divine 
mind  realizes  its  eternal  felicity,  this  activity  of  contempla- 
tion may  still  be  distinguished,  as  a  mode  of  existence,  from 


xvm  TIMELESSNESS  OF  TRUTH  345 

the  content  of  truth  contemplated.  The  timelessness  of 
truth  as  a  logical  content  was  the  discovery  of  Plato.  It 
is  the  profound  thought  which  inspires  his  theory  of  the 
changeless  world  of  Ideas,  the  world  of  true  Being,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  world  of  things  and  events,  the  world  of 
y€vfffi?or  Becoming.  'The  conceptions  through  which  we 
think  things  have  no  part  in  the  mutability  which  we  attrib- 
ute on  account  of  their  changes  to  the  things  of  which  the 
qualities  are  the  predicates.' 1  A  sweet  thing  may  become 
sour,  or  a  white  thing  may  become  black,  but  sweetness  does 
not  become  sourness  or  whiteness  blackness.  Jvery  cnnr«»pfr 
is  a  meaning  timelessly  identical  with  itself  and  timelessly 
related,  by  relations  of  contrast  or  resemblance  or  otherwise, 
to  other  concepts  in  the  world  of  knowledge.  Here,  then, 
we  have  a  world  of  meanings,  related  or  interconnected  with 
one  another,  possessing  a  kind  of  reality,  different  from  the 
reality  which  we  attribute  to  an  existent  thing  or  to  an 
event  that  happens,  but  still  a  reality  which  we  instinctively 
acknowledge,  for  'we  all  feel  certain  in  the  moment  in 
which  we  think  any  truth  that  we  have  not  created  it  for 
the  first  time,  but  merely  recognized  it;  it  was  valid  before 
\ve  thought  of  it,  and  will  continue  so  without  regard  to 
any  existence  of  whatever  kind  '.  It  matters  not  whether 
it  is  ever  exemplified  in  the  structure  of  the  actual  world  or 
is  ever  realized  in  the  thought  of  a  mind. 

This  kind  of  reality  modern  philosophy  would  designate, 
as  Lotze  says,  by  the  term  validity.  The  truths,  we.  say, 
are  valid,  they  hold  good,  and,  as  entirely  independent  of 
time,  we  say  they  are  timelessly  or  eternally  valid.  They 
do  not  belong  to  the  world  of  things  and  events;  they  do 
not  belong  to  what  we  ordinarily  call  the  real  world  at  all. 
Yet  the  kind  of  reality  which  they  possess  is  so  striking 
especially  on  its  first  discovery,  that  we  can  sympathetically 

1 1  utilize  here  and  throughout  this  paragraph  Lotze's  excellent 
account  of  this  ideal  world  in  his  Logic,  Part  III,  chap.  ii. 


346  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

understand  Plato's  descriptions  of  the  world  of  the  Ideas 
as  the  world  of  true  reality,  in  contrast  with  the  world  of 
things  subject  to  change.  For  the  changing  things  seem  to 
possess  any  definite  reality  only  so  far  as  they  are  clothed 
with  one  or  more  of  these  eternal  predicates — in  Platonic 
phrase,  so  far  as  they  participate  in  the  Ideas.  It  may  well 
be,  as  Lotze  suggests,  that  Plato's  description  of  the  Ideas 
as  possessing  no  local  habitation,  as  visible  only  to  the 
mind,  as  a  world  of  pure  intelligence,  a  heaven  beyond  the 
heavens,  and  many  other  glowing  metaphors,  were  intended 
to  guard  against  that  very  hypostatization  of  the  Ideas  as 
actual  existences  or  substances  which  became  the  traditional 
interpretation  of  Platof  s  theory.  But  besides  the  dangerous 
influence  of  poetic  metaphor  upon  more  prosaic  minds,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Plato  had  only  the  one  term 
Being  (ovffia  or  TO  or)  to  express  reality  of  whatever  sort. 
It  was  almost  inevitable,  therefore,  that  the  two  kinds  of 
reality  should  be  assimilated — that  the  Ideas  should  have 
an  existential  status  conferred  on  them,  and  on  the  other 
hand  that  the  reality  at  the  foundation  of  the  existent  world 
should  be  conceived  after  the  fashion  of  the  timeless  validity 
of  truths.  Whatever  his  intention  may  have  been,  this,  as 
a  matter  of  history,  was  Plato's  legacy  to  philosophical 
thought;  and  M.  Bergson  is  right  in  pointing  out  that,  in 
spite  of  Aristotle's  polemic  against  Plato's  substantiation 
of  the  Ideas,  his  own  doctrine  of  God  as  a  Being  apart 
from  the  process  of  the  world,  defined  as  a  thinking  upon 
thought,  is  simply  Plato's  Ideas  '  pressed  into  each  other 
and  rolled  up  into  a  ball '.  '  The  Aristotelian  God  is  the 
Idea  of  Ideas  or  the  synthesis  of  all  concepts  in  a  single 
concept ',  and  the  eternal  divine  thinking  is  conceived 
entirely  on  the  analogy  of  a  timeless  system  of  abstract 
conceptions.1 

As  moderns,  we  may  probably  best  understand  the  time- 

1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  339  (English  translation), 


xvm  THE  PLATONIC  IDEAS  347 

lessness  which  belongs  to  the  notion  of  meaning  or  validity 
by  thinking,  not  of  concepts  or  Ideas,  but  of  truths  or  laws. 
We  naturally  go  for  our  examples  to  what  are  often  called 
necessary  truths — the  laws  of  logic  or  mathematics — which, 
although  suggested  by  observed  facts,  are .  recognized  as  in 
no  way  dependent  on  such  observations.  But  the  induc- 
tively established  laws  of  the  physical  and  other  sciences, 
if  true  at  all,  are  timeless  truths  on  exactly  the  same  foot- 
ing. And  it  may  be  said  that  the  same  holds  good  of  any 
proposition  whatsoever.  It  may  be  only  a  statement  about 
a  particular  event,  but  '  once  true,  always  true  '.  Thus, 
as  Locke  says,  '  Seeing  water  at  this  instant,  it  is  an 
unquestionable  truth  to  me  that  water  doth  exist;  and 
remembering  that  I  saw  it  yesterday,  it  will  be  always  true 
that  water  did  exist  July  10,  1688,  as  it  will  also  be  equally 
true  that  a  certain  number  of  very  fine  colours  did  exist, 
which  at  the  same  time  I  saw  upon  a  bottle  of  that  water '. 
But  clearly  timelessness  in  this  sense  is  not  calculated  to 
throw  light  on  what  may  be  meant  by  eternity,  as  predicated 
of  any  concrete  experience,  and,  as  we  have  already  seen 
in  another  connexion,  it  was  just  because  Green's  theory 
of  an  eternal  consciousness,  based  as  it  was  on  the  logical 
analysis  of  knowledge,  tended  to  treat  that  consciousness 
as  simply  the  logical  unity  of  the  subject  involved  in  every 
judgement,  or  as  the  ideal  focus  of  a  system  of  intelligible 
relations,  that  we  found  it  impossible  to  accept  this  abstract 
principle  of  unity  as  an  eternal  or  divine  Self  operative  in 
our  individual  experience.  ,T.he  timelessness  of  the  subject, 
in  Green's  theory,  is  the  abstract  timelessness  of  the  system 
of  relations  of  which  it  is,  as  he  says,  the  '  medium  and 
sustainer '.  If,  therefore,  we  were  free  to  fix  our  own  ter- 
minology, it  would,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  be  better 
to  restrict  the  predicate  timeless  to  the  world  of  truth  as 
logic  conceives  it,  and,  in  speaking  of  the  concretely  real, 
to  employ  the  opposed  but,  as  it  may  perhaps  be  shown, 


348  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

essentially  correlative  conceptions  of  the  temporal  and  the 
eternal 

The  original  meaning  of  the  eternal  is,  of  course,  not 
that  of  the  timeless,  but  that  which  lasts  or  endures  through 
time.  In  the  grand  old  English  word,  it  is  the  everlasting ; 
or,  in  the  Latin  phrase,  it  is  the  permanent,  that  which 
'  remains  '  while  other  things  '  change  and  pass  '.  Eternal, 
aevitcr.nus,  is,  by  etymology,  age-long.  And,  popularly,  all 
these  terms  are  originally  applied,  not  in  the  strict  sense  of 
lasting  through  all  time,  but  in  a  superlative  and  honorific 
sense,  as  compared  with  human  measures  by  years  and  gen- 
erations. So  we  read  of  '  the  everlasting  hills  ' ;  and  the 
old  phrase  seems  not  out  of  place,  although  we  know  that 
they  are  subject  to  a  perpetual  transformation  through 
nature's  agencies  of  frost  and  sun  and  rain. 

The  hills  are  shadows  and  they  flow 

From  form  to  form,  and  nothing  stands ; 
They  melt  like  mist,  the  solid  lands, 

Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go. 

But  whether  lasting  an  immensely  long  time,  or  being 
literally  without  beginning  or  end,  our  original  conception 
of  the  eternal  plainly  has  its  roots  in  our  temporal  experi- 
ence. Yet  when  we  look  more  closely,  it  is  equally  plain 
that  the  meaning  of  the  term  is  not  exhausted — in  fact 
does  not  primarily  consist — in  the  idea  of  mere  continuance 
or  the  indefinite  prolongation  of  existence.  Such  a  merely 
quantitative  eternity  adds  nothing  of  worth  or  dignity  to 
the  thing  in  question.  It  belongs  by  hypothesis  to  the 
physical  elements,  and  it  might  belong  to  the  most  casual 
and  indifferent  of  their  combinations.  But  the  term  eternal 
and  its  equivalents  are  charged  with  emotional  value;  and 
if  we  consult  the  language  of  religion  in  order  to  discover 
the  source  of  that  value,  we  find  that  what  is  expressed  is  the 
indestructible  confidence  of  the  worshipper  in  the  perma- 


xviii       '  ETERNAL  '  IN  ORDINARY  USAGE       349 

nence  of  the  divine  character  and  in  the  constancy  of  the 
divine  purpose  of  righteousness  as  revealed  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  world.  Qp4  is ..'  the  Father  of  lights,  with  whom 
is  no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning ' ;  it  is  his 
righteousness,  his  truth,  and  above  all,  his  mercy,  which 
'  endureth  for  ever  '.  This  is  the  'Jiving  will ' *  which  binds 
past  and  future  together  in  the  unity  of  a  single  omnipotent 
purpose,  and  which  therefore  in  a  sense  transcends  such  dis- 
tinctions. The  generations  arise  and  pass  away — all  flesh  is 
as  grass — '  but  the  word  of  the  Lord  endureth  for  ever '. 
And  even  when  the  term  is  applied  to  physical  objects,  as  to 
the  hills,  it  is  not,  I  think,  the  idea  of  passive  continuance 
which  we  wish  to  express,  so  much  as  the  feeling  they  in- 
spire of  steadfast  power  to  resist  the  disintegrating  agencies 
of  the  seasons  and  the  years. 

Such  being  the  original  associations  of  the  term,  an 
analysis  of  our  actual  time-experience  may  probably  help 
us  towards  a  truer  view  of  the  antithesis  we  are  considering. 
Many,  perhaps  most,  arguments  on  the  subject  are  based 
on  the  conception  of  absolute  or  mathematical  time.  Now, 
mathematical  time — '  duration  in  itself  ',  as  Locke  called 
it — is  '  considered  as  going  on  in  one  constant  equal  uniform 
course  '.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  abstraction  of  mere  succession — a 
system  of  positions  in  which  we  can  arrange  events  as  before 
or  after  one  another.  This  pauseless  flow  is  conceived  as  a 
succession  of  instants;  but  the  mathematical  instant  has  itself 
no  duration,  just  as  the  mathematical  point  of  the  geometer 
is  commonly  defined  as  possessing  no  spatial  magnitude. 
Both  are  ideal  or  limiting  conceptions :  ', philosophers  ',  Reid 
tells  us,  '  give  the  name  of  the  present  to  that  indivisible 
point  of  time  which  divides  the  future  from  the  past '.  But 
just  as  it  is  impossible  to  regard  the  line  or  the  surface  as 

1  O  living  will,  that  shalt  endure 

When  all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock. 

In  Memoriam,  cxxxi. 


350  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

a  sum  of  such  points,  so  it  is  impossible  to  construct  the 

consciousness  of  real  time  out  of  the  succession  of  such 

timeless  units.     In  fact,  if  we  follow  out  the  conception  to 

its  logical  results,  the  present,  which  we  otherwise  think 

)f  as  '  the  living  present ',  interposed  between  a  past  which 

10  longer  exists  and  a  future  whose  existence  has  not  yet 

)egun,  is  itself  deprived  of  factual  reality,  and  the  whole 

real  content  of  experience  disappears. 

Our  past  is  clean  forgot, 
Our  present  is  and  is  not, 
Our  future  's  a  sealed  seed-plot, 
And  what  betwixt  them  are  we  ?  l 

The  older  psychology  did,  in  point  of  fact,  endeavour' 
to  derive  our  consciousness  of  time  or  duration  from  the 
succession  of  ideas  or  mental  states,  regarded  as  discrete 
events,  no  one  of  which  possesses  duration  in  itself.  Thus 
Locke  tells  us  that,  if  it  were  possible  for  a  waking  man  to 
keep  only  one  idea  in  his  mind  without  variation  and  the 
succession  of  others,  the  perception  of  duration  would  be 
'  quite  lost  to  him ',  as  much  so  as  it  is  in  sound  sleep ; 
though,  with  characteristic  honesty,  he  returns  to  tell  us 
that  in  point  of  fact,  he  does  not  himself  think  this  feat 
is  possible.2  Reid  has  no  difficulty  in  demonstrating  the 
impossibility  of  deriving  a  consciousness  of  duration  from 
the  succession  of  non-durational  units.  If,  as  Locke  seems 
to  say,  it  is  the  intervals  between  the  ideas  which  yield  us 
the  consciousness,3  then  the  intervals  between  the  first 
idea  and  the  second  and  the  intervals  between  any  two 
subsequent  ideas  (although,  according  to  the  hypothesis, 
no  succession  of  ideas  takes  place  in  such  an  interval)  must 

*D.  G.  Rossetti,  'The  Cloud  Confines'. 
'Essay,  II.  14.  4  and  13. 

'The  distance  between  any  parts  of  that  succession,  or  between  the 
appearance  of  any  two  ideas  in  our  minds,  is  what  we  call  duration.' 


xvm  DURATION  AND  SUCCESSION  351 

each  of  them  possess  duration  for  the  mind.  Otherwise  we 
should  be  asked  to  believe  that  the  multiplication  of  nothing 
may  produce  a  definite  quantity.  '  I  conclude,  therefore,' 
he  says,  '  that  there  must  be  duration  in  every  single  interval 
or  element  of  which  the  whole  duration  is  made  up.  Noth- 
ing, indeed,  is  more  certain  than  that  every  elementary  part 
of  duration  must  have  duration,  as  every  elementary  part  of 
extension  must  have  extension.  .  .  .  We  may  measure  dura- 
tion by  the  succession  of  thoughts  in  the  mind,  as  we 
measure  length  by  inches  or  feet;  but  the  notion  or  idea 
of  duration  must  be  antecedent  to  the  mensuration  of  it,  as 
the  notion  of  length  is  antecedent  to  its  being  measured.' x 
But  Reid  appears  still  to  cling  to  the  idea  of  a  succession 
of  non-durational  units,  separated  from  one  another  by 
blocks  of  duration  in  which  no  events  take  place  and  in 
which,  therefore,  no  succession  is  perceived.  In  other 
words,  our  experience  is  treated  as  consisting  of  discrete 
units  of  content  (perceptions  or  ideas)  separated  from  one 
another  by  periods  of  completely  empty  time.  But  empty 
time — a  time  in  which  nothing  happens — is  a  conceptual 

1  Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers,  Essay  III,  chap.  v.  In  spite  of 
this  excellent  conclusion,  Reid's  own  doctrine  is  not  entirely  free  from 
the  confusion  which  he  censures,  for  he  still  treats  our  perceptions  (as 
well  as  what  Locke  calls  ideas  of  reflection)  as  momentary  in  the  mathe- 
matical sense.  He  concludes,  accordingly,  that,  '  if  we  speak  strictly  and 
philosophically,  no  kind  of  succession  can  be  an  object  either  of  the 
senses  or  of  consciousness  [i.  e.  Locke's  reflection]  ;  because  the  opera- 
tions of  both  are  confined  to  the  present  point  of  time,  and  there  can  be 
no  succession  in  a  point  of  time.  .  .  .  Hence  it  is  easy  to  see  that,  though 
in  common  language  we  speak  with  perfect  propriety  and  truth  when  we 
say  that  we  see  a  body  move  and  that  motion  is  an  object  of  sense,  yet 
when,  as  philosophers,  we  distinguish  accurately  the  province  of  sense 
from  that  of  memory,  we  can  no  more  see  what  is  past,  though  but  a 
moment  ago,  than  we  can  remember  what  is  present;  so  that,  speaking 
philosophically,  it  is  only  by  the  aid  of  memory  that  we  discern  motion 
or  any  succession  whatever.  We  see  the  present  place  of  the  body,  we 
remember  the  successive  advance  it  made  to  that  place  ;  the  first  can  then 
only  give  us  a  conception  of  motion  when  joined  to  the  last.'  Cf.  per 
contra,  Mr.  Wildon  Carr's  masterly  treatment  of  this  very  phenomenon, 
'  the  sensation  of  movement ',  in  his  address  to  the  Aristotelian  Society 
on  '  The  Moment  of  Experience ',  Proceedings,  1915-16. 


352  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

abstraction  which  has  no  place  in  real  experience.  Form 
without  matter  nowhere  exists.  A  completely  empty  time 
would  be~simply  equivalent  to  the  suspension  or  stand- 
still of  time.  Our  actual  consciousness  of  time  and  its  lapse 
is  entirely  dependent  on  the  continual  change  of  the  experi- 
enced content.  And  the  content,  though  parts  of  it  are 
punctuated  by  a  more  vivid  interest,  is  not  to  be  conceived 
as  a  series  of  illuminated  points  from  one  to  another  of 
which  we  stride,  so  to  speak,  across  an  interval  of  darkness. 
The  content  is  a  moving  and  gradually  changing  whole. 
The  change  is  in  the  strictest  sense  ceaseless  and  continu- 
ous— a  continuous  flow  or  melting  of  one  moment  into  the 
next.  This  movement,  of  which  we  are  directly  conscious 
in  its  progress,  constitutes  the  concrete  reality  of  time — the 
duree  reelle  which  M.  Bergson  so  impressively  expounds. 
'  Duration ',  as  he  vividly  puts  it,  '  is  the  continuous  prog- 
ress of  the  past  which  gnaws  into  the  future  and  which 
swells  as.  it  advances.' *  And,  as  he  goes  on  to  argue,  time 
as  it  thus  reveals  itself  in  experience,  is  the  very  essence  of 
life  and  of  self-conscious  existence. 

The  continuous  and  '  overlapping  '  character  of  conscious 
experience,  as  well  as  our  direct  apprehension  of  the  tem- 
Doral  relations  involved,  is  emphasized  by  recent  psychology 
n  its  doctrine  of  'the  specious  present '  or  the  '  span  '  of 
consciousness.  William  James's  statement  of  the  doctrine 
in  his  Principles  of  Psychology  is  probably  the  best  known, 
but  within  the  last  few  months  the  position  has  been  very 
ably  re-stated  and  defended  by  Mr.  Wildon  Carr  in  his 
paper  on  '  The  Moment  of  Experience  '.  '  f  he  practically 
cognized  present ',  says  James,  '  is  no  knife-edge,  but  a 
saddle-back  with  a  certain  breadth  of  its  own  on  which 
we  sit  perched,  and  from  which  we  look  in  two  directions 
into  time.  The  unit  of  composition  of  our  perception  of 
time  is  a  duration,  with  a  bow  and  stern,  as  it  were — a  rear- 
1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  5. 


xvm  THE  SPECIOUS  PRESENT  353 

ward  and  a  forward-looking  end.  It  is  only  as  parts  of  this 
duration-block  that  the  relation  of  succession  of  one  end  to 
the  other  is  perceived.  We  do  not  first  feel  one  end  and 
then  feel  the  other  after  it,  and  from  the  perception  of  the 
succession  infer  an  interval  of  time  between,  but  we  seem 
to  feel  the  interval  of  time  as  a  whole  with  its  two  ends 
imbedded  in  it.' *  '  The  content  of  the  duration  thus  steadily 
perceived  is  in  a  constant  flux,  events  dawning  into  its 
forward  end  as  fast  as  they  fade  out  of  its  rearward  one, 
and  each  of  them  changing  its  time-coefficient  from  "  not- 
yet  "  or  "  not-quite-yet  "  to  "  just-gone  "  or  "  gone  "  as  it 
passes  by.  Meanwhile  the  specious  present,  the  intuited 
duration,  stands  permanent,  like  the  rainbow  on  the  water- 
fall, with  its  own  quality  unchanged  by  the  events  that 
stream  through  it.  Each  of  these,  as  it  slips  out,  retains 
the  power  of  being  reproduced.  Please  observe,  however, 
that  the  reproduction  of  an  event,  after  it  has  once  com- 
pletely dropped  out  of  the  rearward  end  of  the  specious 
present,  is  an  entirely  different  psychic  fact  from  its  direct 
perception  in  the  specious  present  as  a  thing  immediately 
past.  A  creature  might  be  entirely  devoid  of  reproductive 
^memory,  and  yet  have  the  time-sense;  but  the  latter  would 
be  limited,  in  his  case,  to  the  few  seconds  immediately 
passing  by.' 2 

1  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  609-10. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  630-1.    Similarly,  Mr.  Carr,  dealing  with  our  perception  of 
the  luminous  line  described  by  a  falling  star,  repudiates  the  explanation 
of  the  line  as  a  fusion  of  quite  recent  memory-images  with  the  actual 
sensation  of  a  luminous  point.    '  By  every  criterion  of  sensation  the  line 
is  sense,  not  memorized.     The  whole  series  is  within  the  moment  of 
experience  and  therefore  a  present  sensation.    A  point  or  instant  is  not 
past  because  it  is  before  another  which  is  present,  nor  is  it  present  only 
when  the  preceding  member  of  the  series  is  not  present.     It  js  present 
while  it  remains  within  the  moment  of  experience.  .  .  .  The  moment  of 
experience  has  within  it  no  distinction  of  past  and  present,  but  it  has 
within  it  the  distinction  of  before  and  after.    The  limit  of  its  duration 
is  where  memory  takes  the  place  of  sensation.'     I  would  refer  also  to 
Professor  McGilvary's  article  on  '  Time  and  the  Experience  of  Time '  in 
the  Philosophical  Review,  March,  1914. 


354  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

Our  primitive  and  basal  experience  of  time  is  thus  charac- 
terized by  a  togetherness  of  parts  or  elements  which  lifts  us 
above  the  aspect  of  mere  succession,  exclusively  emphasized 
in  the  older  accounts:  as  when  Locke  describes  duration  as 
'  perishing  distance,  of  which  no  two  parts  exist  together, 
but  follow  each  other  in  succession  V  In  contrast  with 
temporal  experience,  conceived  as  pure  succession,  the- 
ologians have  described  the  nature  of  the  divine  knowledge 
as  a  totuin  simul,  an  intuition  in  which  the  human  distinc- 
tions of  past  and  future  disappear  in  an  eternal  present.  But 
if  this  is  to  be  accepted  as  an  indication  of  the  meaning  of 
eternity,  it  is  clear  from  what  has  been  said  of  the  real 
nature  of  our  time-consciousness  that  the  contrast  between 
human  and  divine  knowledge  is  not  a  sheer  or  absolute 
contrast  between  the  mere  successiveness  of  mutually  exclu- 
sive moments  and  the  compresence  of  all  these  moments 
„  in  a  single  experience.  For  it  cannot  be  too  strongly  empha- 
sized that  the  experience  of  succession  itself  would  be  impos- 
sible if  the  successive  items  were  not  directly  apprehended 
together  as  stages  of  a  single  process,  parts  within  a  single 
whole  of  duration.  In  the  compresence  which  is  thus  an 
essential  feature  of  our  consciousness  of  time  we  therefore 
already  realize,  though  doubtless  on  an  infinitesimal  scale, 
the  nature  of  an  eternal  consciousness.  '  In  principle/  as 
Professor  Royce  says,  *  we  already  possess  and  are 
acquainted  with  the  nature  of  such  a  consciousness,  when- 
ever we  do  experience  any  succession  as  one  whole.' 2  And 
the  principle  is  not  affected  by  the  narrow  limits  of  our 
human  span.  '  A  thousand  years  in  thy  sight  are  but  as  yes- 
terday when  it  is  past,  and  as  a  watch  in  the  night.'  It  is 
possible,  on  the  basis  of  our  own  experience,  to  imagine  a 
consciousness  to  which  the  whole  content  of  time  is  known 
at  once  in  the  same  way  in  which  a  finite  being  knows  the 
specious  present. 

1  Essay,  II.  15.  12.       *  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  ii,  p.  142. 


xvin     THE  ETERNAL  AS  A  TOTUM  SIMUL     355 

Professor  Royce  has  laid  great  stress  on  this  similarity  of 
structure — this  anticipation,  as  it  may  be  termed,  j)f  the 
eternal  in  the  temporal.  And  sometimes  he  seems  to  say 
that  the  difference  between  the  two  modes  of  consciousness 
consists  simply  in  their  difference  of  span.  '  The  eternal 
jnsight',  we  read  for  example,  'observer  the  whole_pf  time 
and  all  that  happensjherein,  andjs_eternal  only  by  virtue  of 
the  fart  that  it  -doesJaiQ:vLJJie_:wjiole  of  time//  But  it  is 
clear  that  if  the  totum  simul  means  no  more  than  this,  it  is 
not  enough.  We  clearly  do  not  mean  by  an  eternal  con- 
sciousness one  which  simply  contemplates  the  world  as  a 
series  of  events,  but  is  somehow  able  to  include  the  whole 
series  in  its  span.  Such  a  consciousness  could  not  be  said  in 
any  important  sense  to  transcend  time ;  for,  regarded  simply 
as  events  that  happen,  the  perceived  content  possesses  no 
internal  unity  which  would  permit  of  its  being  grasped  as 
a  whole.  The  very  defect  of  the  temporal  order,  as  merely 
temporal,  is  the  inherent  absence  of  unity  and  totality — the 
completely  inorganic  level  at  which  its  contents  remain ;  and__ 
in  an  eternal  consciousness  this  defect  is  supposed  to  be 
corrected  or  overcome.  But  a  consciousness  which  is  merely 
a  Tdtum  stmul  would  be  no  better  than  an  epiphenomenon 
or  accompaniment  of  the  endless  succession.  Or,  as  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet  puts  it,  we  should  have  '  only  a  fixed 
panorama  of  exactly  the  same  occurrences  which  form  a 
-diorama .  for  the  man  who  goes  through  them  '.2  The  real 
intention  of  Professor  Royce's  argument  must  be  gathered, 
therefore,  from  the  alternative  wording  he  more  usually 
employs — to  know  the  process  '  as  a  whole  ' — and  by  the 
illustration,  to  which  he  constantly  recurs,  of  the  musical 
phrase  or  melody.  For  here  we  are  dealing,  not  simply  with 

1  Ibid.,  p.  144. 

2  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  388  (Appendix).    Cf.  Taylor,  Elements 
of  Metaphysics,  p.  264:  'The  direct  insight  of  the  Absolute  Experience 
into  its  own  internal  meaning  or  structure  cannot  be  adequately  thought 
of  as  mere  simultaneous  awareness  of  the  detail  of  existence.' 


356  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

a  longer  or  shorter  succession  of  sounds,  but  with  a  series 
which  is  significant  and  in  a  proper  sense  a  whole;  and 
although  the  successive  order  is  an  essential  factor  in  the 
result,  the  consciousness  of  the  melody  as  an  aesthetic  fact, 
or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  the  perception  of  the  meaning  of 
any  sentence,  is  an  immediate  perception  different  in  kind 
from  that  in  which  we  contemplate  a  series  of  events.  The 
notes  of  the  melody  succeed  one  another  in  time,  and  the 
sentence  is  resolvable  into  separate  words,  and  these  again 
into  syllables,  no  one  of  which  co-exists,  as  a  physical  fact, 
with  any  other.  Yet  it  is,  in  truth,  only  subsequent  reflection 
of  a  scientific  kind  which,  abstracting  from  the  intellectual  or 
musical  meaning,  enables  us  to  isolate  the  elementary  con- 
stituent sounds  as  successive  events,  occupying  each  its 
exclusive  moment  of  conceptual  or  physical  time.  In  the 


consciousness- uif  such  a  significant  whole,  therefore,  we 
Jiave  an  example  of  a  consciousness  which  may  be  called 
eternal,  npt  in  the  sense  of  a  maximized  consciousness  of 
time,  but  as  an  apprehension  different  in  type,  in  which 
the  temporal  facts  appear  simply  as  the  vehicle  of  a  meaning 
or  value,  — 

Moreover,  it  is  only  fair  to  remember  that  the  epiphenom- 
enal  or  purely  '  spectator '  theory  entirely  misrepresents  the 
nature  even  of  finite  consciousness.  No  consciousness  falls 
asunder  into  a  series  of  events  that  simply  pass  in  time,  any 
more  than  time  itself  can  be  resolved  into  a  series  of  discrete 
or  mutually  exclusive  instants.  Past,  present,  and  future  are 
not  to  be  conceived  as  separate  sections  of  a  line,  or  as  if  they 
were  lengths  cut  off  an  unwinding  ribbon,  related  to  one 
another  merely  as  different  and  mutually  exclusive  sections 
of  an  impersonal  sequence.  ^Eime.js  not  an  element  in  which 
consciousness  passes,  or -a  procession  which  passes  before 
consciousness  ;_jt  is  simply..ihe  abstract  form  of  the  living 
movement  which  constitutes  the  reality  of  conscious  life.  If 
there  is  anything  that  a  sound  psychology  teaches  us,  it  is 


xvm     ACTIVE  BASIS  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS      357 

the  essentially  conative  structure  of  that  life.    And  in  cona- 


tion  or  active  striving,  past,  present,  and  future  are  organi- 
_cally  related  to  one  another  in  the  unity  of  a  single  experience. 
Activity,  as  I  am  now  using  the  term,  is  the  characteristic 
of  the  livpig"anH  thp  rnrmrinn«;  being  alone.;  any  application 
of  the  term,  or  any  transference  of  its  associations,  to  the 
happenings  of  physical  nature  and  the  causal  relations  be- 
tween one  phenomenon  and  another  is  rightly  branded  as 
anthropomorphism.  In  the  older  psychology  (as  well  as  in 
some  more  recently  fashionable  psychologies)  physics  may 
be  said  to  have  revenged  itself  for  this  intrusion ;  for  in  these 
systems  our  mental  experience  is  constructed  out  of  the  in- 
terplay of  static  entities,  called  sensations,  percepts,  images, 
etc.,  conceived  as  the  '  objects  '  of  a  consciousness  which  is 
simply  an  eye  beholding  their  evolutions.  The  temptation 
so  to  conceive  the  mental  life  is  naturally  strongest  in 
dealing  with  perspective  or  specifically  intellectual  proc- 
esses; but.  to.  yield  to  it  is  to  forget. that,  regarded  thus 
statically,  these  facts  or  objects  are  only  convenient  abstrac- 
tions from  a  concrete  process  which  has  its  active  basis  in 
the  facts  of  interest  and  attention.  Mental  experience  is, 
in  every  phase  of  it,  a  process;  and  that  process  is  not  an 
impersonal  movement  or  flow,  but  a  movement  towards  an 
end  of  some  sort.  The  facts  of  life  and  of  mind  cannot  be 
truly  described,  in  short,  except  ideologically,  that  is  to  say, 
as  activity  directed  towards  some  end.  To  speak  of  end  or 
purpose  is  to  employ  too  developed  and  too  complex  terms, 
if  we  are  supposed  to  intend  by  them  an  object  of  desire 
clearly  conceived  and  deliberately  pursued.  The  end  may 
be  in  the  creature  rather  than  consciously  present  to  it. 
Hence  mnptinn — a  term  wide  enough  to  include  a  striving 
which  may  be  almost  blind — is  possibly  better  adapted  even 
than  the  term  activity  to  express  what  is  meant,  viz.  lhat  at 
every  point  the  process  of  consciousness  is  interpretable  as 
a  self-directed  movement  towards  some  end,  and  can  be 


358  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

intelligibly  interpreted  in  no  other  way.  Time  and  its  direc-_ 
tion  are,  as  it  were,  the  transcript  of  this  movement;  in  it 
they  acquire  a  concrete  significance..  The  future  towards 
which  man's  face  is  set  is  primarily  the  end  towards  which 
he  strives,  but  which  is  not  yet  within  his  grasp.  As  soon 
as  it  is  grasped  or  enjoyed,  it  becomes  the  starting-point  of 
a  new  pursuit  and  so  recedes  into  the  past.  The  words  of 
the  Apostle  describing  his  own  attitude  of  moral  endeavour 
are,  in  fact,  an  apt  description  of  this  universal  aspect, of 
human  experience—'  forgetting  those  things  which  are  be- 
hind,  and  reaching  forth  unto  those  things  which  are  before '. 

The  consideration  of  Time  has  thus  brought  us  back  to  the 
idea  of  Purpose  or  End,  and  it  will  be  remembered  that  it 
was  precisely  the  difficulties  connected  with  that  idea,  as 
an  ultimate  category  of  explanation,  that  led  to  our  present 
analysis.  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  compass  we  have  thus 
fetched  carries  with  it  an  instructive  moral.  Purpose  was 
condemned  as  essentially  a  temporal  category.  This  is  true, 
but  the  relation  of  the  two  terms  is  now  reversed,  JOT  pur- 
posive  activity  is  seen  to  be  the  concrete  reality  of  which 
time  is  merely  the  abstract  form.  Xime  is  the  abstraction  of 
unachieved  purpose  or  of  purpose  on  the  way  to  achieve- 
ment. Now,  if  this  is  so,  it  seems  certain  that  an  intelligible 
meaning  of  eternity  will  be  found,  not  by  abandoning  the 
idea  of  purpose,  but  by  following  it  out.  The  eternal  view  of 
a  time-process  is  not  the  view  of  all  its  stages  simultaneously, 
.but  the  view  of  them  as  elements  or  members  of  a  completed 
»  Purpose,  Then  only  can  we  be  said  to  see  them  '  as  a  whole  '. 

As  we  have  so  often  had  occasion  to  observe,  this  tran- 
scendence of  mere  succession  is  exemplified  in  every  appli- 
cation of  the  idea  of  growth  or  development.  The  impossi- 
bility which  we  experience  of  explaining  later  phases  of  such 
a  process  exhaustively  by  reference  to  the  earlier  is  a  proof 
that  there  is  more  in  the  process  than  appears  at  any  given 
stage.  The  burden  of  our  first  series  of  lectures  may  be  said 


xvm  ELEMENTS  IN  A  PURPOSE  359 

to  have  been  the  exposure  of  the  so-called  scientific  explana- 
tion, which  seek  the  whole  cause  of  a  complex  effect  in  cer- 
tain simpler  temporal  antecedents,  and,  by  pursuing  this 
illusory  quest  from  stage  to  stage,  eventually  arrives  at  the 
physical  scheme  of  moving  particles  as  the  reality  of  the 
universe.    We  feel  that  such  an  analysis  offers  no  explana- 
tion of  what  was  the  very  point  to  be  explained,  the  differ- 
ence between  one  stage  and  another,  the  growth  in  richness 
and  complexity,  the  increment  of  being,  so  to  speak,  as  we 
pass  from  the  lower  to  the  higher.   ,And  that  is  why  we  pass 
from  the  mechanical  to  the  teleological  mode  of  explanation. 
In  so  doing  we  may  be  said  to  supplement  the  causality  of  * 
the  past  by  the  causality  of  the  future,  explaining  the  evolv-  • 
ing  subject  not  only  by  what  it  has  been,  but,  still  more  vitally, 
by  what  it  is  not  yet,  but  is  on  its  way  to  become.    This  we| 
call  the  Idea  or  the  End  realized  in  tfce  process.    The  nature 
of  the  Idea  or  End  is,  of  course,  only  gradually  disclosed  ir 
the  course  of  the  process,  and  can  be  fully  or  positivel} 
known  only  at  its  conclusion ;  so  that  it  does  not  enable  us,  ir 
the  case  of  a  subject  still  evolving,  to  predict  the  nature 
the  future  stages.  .It  was,  in  fact,  just  the  unpredictableness 
of  the  later  stages  from  the  standpoint  of  the  earlier  that  • 
drove  us  to  this  teleological  mode  of  explanation.    We  are  > 
wise,  as  it  were,  after  the  event ;  andL  f rom  the  standpoint  of  v 
the  later  stage  we  think  of  the  earlier  as  containing  in  itself 
the  potentiality  of  all  that  actually  followed  upon  it,  although 
no  analysis  of  the  earlier  by  itself  is  capable  of  making  the 
presence  of  the  later  in  the  earlier  palpable  to  us. 

But  to  think  of  the  End  as  performed  or  prefigured  in  the 
beginning,  and  to  think  of  it  as  operative  while  still  an 
unrealized  idea  in  the  future,  are  both  unsatisfactory  modes, 
of  statement  due  to  our  human  position  in  mcdiis  rebus, ' 
in  the  middle  of  an  uncompleted  process.     The  fact  with 
which  we  are  faced  is  the  breakdown  of  causal  explana- 
tion through  the  antecedent  in  time.     But  to  bring  in  the 


360  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

future,  as  teleology  seems  to  do,  to  make  good  the  defects  of 
the  past,  is  really  an  imperfect  way  of  saying  that  we  are 
dealing  with  a  systematic  whole,  and  that  the  complete 
explanation,  or,  in  the  technical  language  of  logic,  the  ground 
of  any  phenomenon  is  to  be  found  only  in  the  nature  of  that 
system  or  whole.  As  Professor  Taylor  well  puts  it,  '  The 
succession  of  stages  is  welded  into  a  unity  by  the  singleness 
of  the  plan  or  law  which  they  embody.  The  series  of  suc- 
cessive  states  which  make  up  the  history  of  a  thing  are  the 
expression  of  the  thing's  nature  or  structure.  To  understand 
the  thing's  structure  is  to  possess  the  key  to  the  succession 
of  its  states.  ...  It  is  evident  that  in  proportion  as  our 
knowledge  of  any  thing  or  system  of  things  approaches  this 
insight  into  the  laws  of  its  structure,  the  processes  of  change 
acquire  a  new  meaning  for  us.  They  lose  their  appearance 
of  paradox  and  tend  to  become  the  self-evident  expression  of 
the  identity  which  is  their  underlying  principle.  Change, 
once  reduced  to  law  and  apprehended  as  the  embodiment  in 
succession  of  a  principle  we  can  understand,  is  no  longer 
change  as  an  unintelligible  mystery.' l 

But  if  time  may  be  said  to  be  thus  transcended  in  the  idea 
of  a  teleological  process  as  an  organic  whole,  words  like 
'  law  '  or  '  plan  ',  '  structure  '  or  '  system  ',  must  not  mislead 
us  into  thinking  of  the  whole  as  timeless  in  the  sense  which 
we  began  by  discarding,  that  is  to  say,  as  an  abstract  logical 
content.  This  sense,  we*  decided,  could  have  no  meaning  as 
applied  to  reality,  for  reality  must  be  an  experience  not  a 
theorem.  As  the  Eleatic  Stranger  exclaims  in  the  Sophist, 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  the  blank  eternity  of  the 
concept,  '  Can  we  ever  be  made  to  believe  that  motion  and 
life  and  soul  and  mind  are  not  present  in  absolute  Being? 
Can  we  imagine  Being  to  be  devoid  of  life  and  mind,  and  to 
remain  a  venerable,  holy,  mindless,  unmoving  fixture  ?  ' 2 
_  Movement,  activity,  process,  is  for  us  the  very  differentia  of 
1  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  pp.  162-3.  *  Sophist,  249. 


xvm     ANALOGY  OF  AN  ARTISTIC  WHOLE     361 
rmlity  frfttn  Uit  ab?tr?^tirins  nf  sri'ptirp  nr  of  logic; 


and  therefore,  so  far  as  this  involves  time,  time  must  be 
retained  in  any  conception  we  can  form  of  an  Absolute 
JExperience.  .The  '^texnaLact  '  Jby  which  the  universe  subsists 
can  only  be  thought  of  by  us  as  process  continually  renewed  ; 
and  although,  to  the  synoptic  view,  the  end  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  beginning,  as  it  is  to  the  finite  individual 
within  the  process,  the  type  of  experience  suggested  is  not 
one  in  which  the  stages  are  viewed  side  by  side  as  in  a  fixed 
picture,  but  one  in  which  the  whole  is  felt  in  every  part,  and 
every  part  is  real  as  an  element  in  the  whole. 

Hence  it  is,  I  think,  that  the  analogy  of  a  work  of  art  —  a 
great  drama  or  story  —  often  seems  to  bring  us  nearest  to 
what  we  feel  must  be  the  truth.  For  here,  too,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  detached  event,  a  mere  present.  Jn  a 


tragedy  everything  that  happens  is  organic  to  the  whole; 
the  action  which  passes  on  the  stage  at  any  moment  depends 
for  its  significance  on  all  that  has  gone  before,  and  we  fore- 
feel  in  it  the  future  issues  which  are  being  decided.  When 
we  read  or  witness  a  play  for  the  first  time,  and  the  course 
of  the  action  is  unknown  to  us,  this  sense  of  the  solidarity 
of  the  whole,  the  prescience  of  an  immanent  destiny  working 
itself  out  in  individual  scenes  —  in  a  word  or  a  glance  —  natur- 
ally grows  as  we  proceed,  and  reaches  its  maximum  of 
intensity  as  we  approach  the  close.  The  infinite  pathos  of 
Othello  is  all  uttered  in  the  parting  cry,  '  No  way  but  this  '. 
But  in  the  case  of  Greek  tragedy,  where  the  legendary  basis 
was  familiar  to  the  spectators,  or  in  the  case  of  any  modern 
masterpiece  where  the  end  and  the  outline  of  the  plot  are 
known  to  us  beforehand,  this  perception  of  the  meaning  of 
the  whole  as  articulated  in  the  individual  incidents  is  present 
to  the  reader  or  the  spectator  of  the  piece  from  the  very  out- 
set. And  the  same  thing  is  true  when  we  hear  the  opening 
chords  of  a  well-known  symphony;  we  hear  them  not  as 
single  chords  but  as  elements  in  a  great  musical  structure, 


362  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

prophetic,  as  it  were,  of  all  the  thought  and  emotion  that  is 
to  follow.  The  former  case,  where  the  End  is  gradually 
disclosed  to  us — divined  by  us — as  we  proceed,  represents 
our  human,  finite  attitude  towards  the  future;  the  second, 
which  may  be  supposed  to  reproduce  that  of  the  original 
poet  or  composer,  is  perhaps  the  nearest  analogue  we  have 
to  the  divine  apprehension  of  the  temporal.  What  is  com- 
mon to  both  is  the  perception  of  the  meaning  as  resident  in 
the  whole,  and  the  impossibility,  therefore,  of  taking  any 
stage  by  itself,  even  the  last.  In  reading  the  last  scene  of 
a  tragedy,  or  as  we  move  towards  the  close  of  some  great 
poem,  we  feel  perhaps  more  profoundly  than  in  any  other 
way  the  truth  of  Hegel's  well-known  saying  that  the  End  is 
not  something  that  can  exist,  or  can  be  understood,  by  itself. 
For  art,  as  for  philosophy,  the  End  is  inseparable  from  the 
process  of  its  accomplishment.  The  End  is  not  the  final 
stage  which  succeeds  and  supplants  its  predecessors ;  it  is 
the  meaning  or  spirit  of  the  whole,  distilled,  as  it  were,  into 
gach  individual  scene  or  passage. 

JThe  same  principle  applies  to  the  history  of  a  life.  To 
take  it  as  '  pure  history  '  is  to  rob  it  of  all  significance.  We 
involuntarily  regard  it  as  the  unfolding  of  a  specific  nature, 
the  moulding  of  a  mind  and  character  in  the  play  of  circum- 
stance or  the  stress  of  passion.  We  regard  it,  in  the  phrase 
so  often  used  already,  as  the  making  of  a  soul.  The  external 
observer  can  but  dimly  apprehend  the  stages  and  the  factors 
in  the  drama,  his  interest  and  his  insight  being  alike  super- 
ficial ;  but  even  he  can  appreciate  to  some  extent  the  quality 
of  the  product.  Oftenest,  perhaps,  under  the  transfiguring 
touch  of  death,  does  the  informing  spirit  of  a  beloved  life — 
;  its  '  idea  ',  as  Shakespeare  calls  it l — stand  revealed,  lighting 
up  the  significance  of  individual  acts  or  sayings,  half-for- 

1  The  reference  is  to  the  beautiful  lines  in  Much  Ado  about  Nothing 
(Act  iv,  sc.  i) : 

The  idea  of  her  life  shall  sweetly  creep. 
Into  his  study  of  imagination ;  . 


xvm  THE  '  IDEA '  OF  A  LIFE  363 

gotten,  as  glimpses  of  a  single  soul.  $o,  but  far  more  inti- 
jnately,  we  may  conceive  a  human  mind  and  life  to  be 
realized  as  a  divine  idea  or  an  individual  purpose  in  the 
Absolute.  Far  more  intimately,  for  to  the  tenderest  finite 
sympathy  the  '  idea  '  must  retain  much  of  the  abstractness 
of  a  construction  from  the  outside ;  but  whatever  independ- 
ence of  will  we  may  attribute  to  the  creature,  we  cannot 
think  of  him,  in  relation  to  the  creative  and  informing  Spirit, 
as  dwelling  in  an  inaccessible  sphere  of  his  own.  '  All  things 
are  naked  and  opened  unto  the  eyes  of  him  with  whom  we 
have  to  do.'  The  divine  idea  of  '  a  mind  and  life  '  Vjwould 


.therefore  be  the  very  life  itself,  experienced  as  significant 
because  experienced  as  a  whole,  and,  what  is  more,  as  part 
of  the  meaning  of  the  all-inclusive  whole. 

.Somewhat  in  this  fashion  we  may  perhaps  conceive  that 
the  time-process  is  retained  in  the  Absolute  and  yet  tran- 
£cendecL_  Retained  in  some  form  it  must  be,  if  our  life  ex- 
perience is  not  to  be  deprived  of  all  meaning  and  value.  The 
temporal  process  is  not  simply  non-existent  from  the  Abso- 
lute point  of  view ;  it  is  not  a  mere  illusion,  any  more  than 
the  existence  of  the  finite  world,  of  which,  indeed,  it  is  the 
characteristic  form  and  expression.  I  have  urged  consist- 
ently in  these  later  lectures  that  the  existence  of  that  world 
must  represent  a  necessity  of  the  divine  nature  and  must 
possess  a  value  for  the  divine  experience.  Hence  the  time- 
process  must  enter  somehow  into  that  experience. 

It  may  be  objected  that,  in  the  view  suggested,  time  really 
vanishes  altogether  in  the  Absolute.  The  characteristic  fea- 
tures of  a  life  in  time  are  the  '  not  yet '  and  the  '  no  more  ', 
and  for  these  there  is  no  place  in  a  complete  experience.  As 

And  every  lovely  organ  of  her  life 
Shall  come  apparell'd  in  more  precious  habit, 
More  moving  delicate,  and  full  of  life, 
Into  the  eye  and  prospect  of  his  soul, 
Than  when  she  lived  indeed. 
1  'The  shape  and  colour  of  a  mind  and  life'  (Tennyson,  Elaine). 


364  TIME  AND  ETERNITY  LECT. 

Professor  McGilvary  urges  ' :  '  The  time-order  in  which 
experienced  events  stand  is  an  order  into  which  they  come. 
Now  the  Absolute  experiences  the  order  in  which  events 
stand ;  but  it  fails  to  experience  anything  as  novel  or  to  feel 
any  loss.  Into  the  all-inclusive  present  of  the  Absolute 
nothing  can  enter:  everything  is  already  there.  His  time 
is  therefore  untimed  time.  The  very  entirety  of  his  vision 
detemporalizes  what  he  sees.  .  .  .  To  look  forward  with 
bated  breath  or  to  stand  on  tiptoe  of  expectation;  to  strain 
our  eyes  for  the  first  blush  of  dawn  after  our  sorrows  have 
endured  through  a  long  night;  to  watch  by  the  bedside  of 
a  friend,  sick  it  may  be  unto  death,  and  have  our  hearts  rise 
and  fall  with  each  unforeseen  turn — such  are  the  crises  in 
which  for  all  of  us  the  experience  of  time  culminates.  The 
Absolute  can  have  no  inkling  of  what  lies  on  the  inside  of 
such  experiences.  To  see  all  at  once  is  to  fail  to  feel  the 
temporal  sequence  as  genuinely  temporal.'  But  however 
poignantly  we  may  feel  the  truth  of  such  a  passage,  we  must 
remember  that  just  such  a  contrast  is  a  necessary  result  of 

the  situation : 

We  that  are  not  all, 

As  parts,  can  see  but  parts,  now  this,  now  that, 
And  live,  perforce,  from  thought  to  thought,  and  make 
One  act  a  phantom  of  succession :  thus 
Our  weakness  somehow  shapes  the  shadow,  Time. 

But  it  is  an  unreasoning  procedure  to  seek  to  transfer  this 
attitude  to  a  universal  Spirit.  We  must  conceive,  and  we 
can  in  some  sense  understand,  the  temporal  process  as  a 
necessary  condition  of  the  existence  of  partial  minds,  to 
which  their  content  has  to  be  communicated,  which  have 
to  be  made,  or  to  make  themselves,  in  commerce  with  the 
mighty  whole.  Time,  in  such  a  view,  becomes  an  appear- 
ance incident  to  their  partial  nature.  Time  (and  space)  are 

1 '  Time  and  the  Experience  of  Time,'  Philosophical  Re-view,  vol.  xxiii, 
p.  144.  Professor  McGilvary's  criticism  is  perhaps  directed  more  par- 
ticularly against  Professor  Royce's  view  of  eternity  as  merely  an  all- 
inclusive  view  of  the  contents  of  time. 


xvm         THE  CONTAINING  EXPERIENCE         365 

to  be  regarded,  in  short,  as  the  principle,  individuationis ,  the 
forms  of  finite  individuation,  but  as  somehow  transcended 
in  the  ultimate  Experience  on  which  we  depend.  Philoso- 
phers sometimes  speak  as  if  we  could  ourselves  transcend 
these  conditions.  The  mind,  it  is  said,  is  not  in  space,  and 
as  knowing  succession,  some  thinkers  like  to  speak  of  it  as 
itself  timeless.  But  although  the  philosopher  may  constitute 
himself,  in  Plato's  phrase,  spectator  of  all  time  and  all 
existence,  his  timelessness  or  spacelessness  is  only  in  a  man- 
ner of  speaking;  for  he  views  all  time  from  his  own  '  Now  ' 
and  all  space  from  the  '  Here  '  of  his  own  body.  JLt-isJus 
anchorage  to  a  definite  '  here  '  and  '  now  '  that  makes  him  a, 

.creature  of  time  and  place,  that  shapes  his  view  of  the  world 
for  him,  and  makes  him  incapable  of  realizing  any  other 
experience  except  as  an  abstract  suggestion,  or  at  most  as  a 
divination..  In  our  attempts  at  description  it  is  a  case,  as 
St.  Augustine  says,rw/  nosse  ignorando  vel  ignorare  no- 
sfenda~.  But  it  does  not  follow,  as  Professor  McGilvary  sug- 
gests, that  the  containing  experience  is  without  '  an  inkling 
of  what  lies  on  the  inside  '  of  the  doing  and  suffering  of  the 
creatures  of  time.  The  author  also  knows  the  end  from  the 
beginning,  at  least  in  the  sense  that  the  ground-plan  of  his 
story  and  its  conclusion  stand  before  him,  so  that  he  con- 
templates all  the  actions  of  his  characters  as  steps  in  a  des- 
tiny; yet  he  must  himself  feel,  and  make  the  reader  enter 
into,  the  temporal  outlook  of  his  figures  at  each  crisis  of  their 
fate.  And  if  it  be  objected  that  this  is  intelligible  because 

.  the  author  is  himself,  like  the  characters  he  creates,  a  creature 
of  time,  it  may  be  retorted  that  it  is  everywhere  the  mark  of 
the  higher  and  wider  experience  to  comprehend  the  lower 
and  narrower,  whereas  the  contrary  is  excluded  by  the  very 
nature  of  the  case.  So  the  human  intelligence  can  appre- 
ciate the  dumb  strivings  of  the  animal  mind,  or  a  parent 
can  sympathize  with  the  ephemeral  joys  and  unreasoning 
sorrows  of  his  child.  May  we  not  extend  the  analogy  ? 


LECTURE  XIX 
BERGSONIAN  TIME  AND  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE 

TIME,  then,  seems  one  with  the  existence  of  the  finite;  and 
although  the  experience  and  the  relations  of  time  must  be 
represented  in  the  infinite  Experience,  this  must  be  in  a  way 
which  transcends  our  human  perspective.  So  we  might  sum- 
marize the  argument  of  the  preceding  lecture.  It  was  a 
silent  presupposition  of  the  argument  that  time  cannot  be 
taken  (in  the  current  phrase)  as  ultimately  real;  that  is  to 
say,  time,  with  all  its  implications  of  development  and  prog- 
ress, is  an  aspect  of  facts  within  the  universe, — an  aspect  of 
central  significance,  we  have  contended,  but  still  an  aspect 
within  the  whole — not,  as  it  were,  a  containing  element  in 
which  the  Absolute  or  the  All  exists,  and  through  which  it 
advances,  garnering  new  being  and  perfections  as  it  pro- 
ceeds. The  idea  of  an  absolute  experience  in  which  time  is 
transcended  is  undoubtedly  difficult,  and  the  conception  of  a 
growing  universe  may  seem,  on  a  first  statement,  much 
easier;  yet,  as  often  as  the  conception  has  presented  itself, 
we  have  set  it  aside  as  intrinsically  incredible.  A  finite  indi- 
vidual grows  by  appropriation  from  its  environment — grows, 
in  the  last  resort,  by  appropriation  of  the  riches  of  the 
whole ;  but  we  feel  that,  while  we  may  properly  speak  of  such 
processes  within  the  whole,  it  is  not  less  than  unmeaning  to 
speak  of  the  whole  itself  as  such  a  process.  Yet  that  is  what 
is  supposed  to  be  involved  in  M.  Bergson's  theory  of  '  crea- 
tive '  evolution,  and  it  is  certainly  the  meaning  of  the  '  unfin- 
ished universe  '  of  William  James  and  other  Pluralists.  The 
idea  calls,  therefore,  for  a  more  careful  examination  than 
we  have  hitherto  given  it. 

We  have  freely  acknowledged  the  value  of  M.  Bergson's 


xix  SPATIALIZED  TIME  367 

exposition  of  the  true  nature  of  duree  rcelle  as  the  funda- 
mental characteristic  of  conscious  life,  and  as  distinguished 
from  the  spatialized  time  of  physical  theory  and  of  ordinary 
reflective  thinking,  dominated  as  that  is  by  spatial  images. 
We  habitually  figure  the  course  of  time  to  ourselves  under 
the  image  of  a  line.  But,  as  M.  Bergson  insists,  there  can  be 
no  greater  contrast  than  that  between  the  continuity  or  flow- 
ing of  real  time — the  mutual  interpenetration  of  its  parts 
with  the  conservation  of  the  past  in  the  present — and  the 
static  image  which  we  construct  for  ourselves  of  conceptual 
time,  as  consisting  of  separate  and  mutually  exclusive 
moments  arranged  in  an  order  of  juxtaposition,  like  the 
parts  of  a  line  in  space.  Thinking  of  time  thus,  it  is  no  won- 
der that  we  cannot  see  our  way  through  the  paradoxes  of 
Zeno  about  the  impossibility  of  movement;  for  we  have  con- 
veyed into  the  fluent  moments  of  time  the  same  immobility 
and  separateness  which  belongs  to  points  of  space,  and  so,  as 
Zeno  says,  '  the  flying  arrow  is  always  at  rest '. 

In  his  first  book,  on  Time  and  Free  Will,  M.  Bergson  has 
worked  out  impressively  the  influence  of  this  spatialized  idea 
of  time  in  producing  the  peculiar  illusion  of  determinism 
which  represents  us  as  the  slaves  of  our  own  past,  figured  as 
a  kind  of  external  destiny.  It  is  again  the  image  of  the  line, 
giving  an  artificial  permanence  and  externality  to  the  cir- 
cumstances or  actions  of  the  past.  But  the  past  has  no 
operative  reality  save  as  fused  in  the  agent's  present,  and  we 
have  no  right  to  transport  ourselves  in  imagination  to  some 
point  in  the  past  and  treat  our  future  course  of  action  as 
performed  or  predetermined  there.  As  William  James  says, 
'  the  whole  feeling  of  reality,  the  whole  sting  and  excitement 
of  our  voluntary  life,  depends  on  our  sense  that  such  things 
are  really  being  decided  from  one  moment  to  another,  and 
that  it  is  not  the  dull  rattling  off  of  a  chain  that  was  forged 
innumerable  ages  ago  V  But,  if  we  banish  the  associations 
1  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i,  p.  453- 


368  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

of  the  spatial  image,  we  have  in  the  self  a  development  which 
is  real  at  every  point.  The  self  is  making  itself  continually 
by  its  own  actions,  and  each  of  these  actions  is  free  in  the 
ethical  sense  required.  Hence,  as  M.  Bergson  says,  the  self 
'lives  and  develops  till  the  free  action  detaches  itself  from 
it  like  a  fruit  overripe  '.  There  is  no  necessity  here  to  revive 
the  idea  of  the  liberum  arbitrium,  nor  does  M.  Bergson 
appear  to  do  so.  It  is  enough  that  every  act  of  moral  choice 
is,  in  its  very  idea,  free,  and  is  recognized  by  the  agent  as 
such  to  the  end,  however  settled  in  certain  courses  of  actions 
he  may  have  become.  The  ethical  point  obscured  by  the 
false  conception  of  time  is  simply,  as  Professor  Bosanquet 
expresses  it,  '  that  nothing  past,  nothing  external,  is  opera- 
tive in  the  agent's  choice.  It  is  all  gathered  up  and  made  into 
the  agent  himself.'  Hence,  '  nothing  but  the  agent  deter- 
mines the  act,  and  there  is  no  sense  in  applying  to  him  any 
"  must  "  or  "  cannot  help  it  "  except  in  the  sense  that  every- 
thing is  what  it  is  V 

We  are  subject  to  the  same  spatial  illusion  in  thinking  of 
the  course  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  We  project  the  content 
of  the  universe  into  the  past,  and  conceive  all  that  follows,  in 
James's  phrase,  as  '  the  dull  rattling  off  of  a  chain  forged 
innumerable  ages  ago  ' — a  kind  of  destiny  which  the  gener- 
ations have  to  undergo,  or  a  programme  which  they  have  to 
work  out  as  passive  instruments.  If  we  embody  this  fixed 
fate  in  a  mechanical  system  of  material  elements  and  forces, 
we  have  the  common  naturalistic  creed ;  but  it  may  also  take 
a  theological  form,  as  in  doctrines  of  divine  predestination 
where  '  the  purpose  of  God  '  appears  as  a  '  doom  assigned  '. 
There  is  also  the  idealistic  form,  in  which  the  course  of  the 
world  appears  as  the  pre-determined  evolution  of  a  principle 
eternally  perfect  and  complete.  In  all  these  cases,  if  the 
idea  of  complete  determination  is  taken  seriously,  a  paralysis 
tends  to  creep  over  the  life  of  moral  effort  and  practical 
1  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  355. 


xix         THE  ILLUSION  OF  DETERMINISM         369 

activity.  And  we  may  agree  with  Bergson  that  it  is  prac- 
tically indifferent  whether  we  adopt  the  naturalistic  or  the 
teleological  alternative,  that  is  to  say,  whether  we  regard  the 
course  of  events  as  predetermined  by  the  collocations  of 
brute  matter  or  by  some  divine  Idea.  Radical  mechanism 
and  radical  finalism  (so  he  calls  the  two  theories)  are  in  this 
respect  at  one,  that  in  both,  according  to  his  favourite  phrase, 
tout  est  donne,  everything  is  given  once  for  all.  Finalism  is, 
in  this  respect,  '  only  inverted  mechanism ;  it  substitutes  the 
attraction  of  the  future  for  the  impulsion  of  the  past.  But 
succession  remains  none  the  less  a  mere  appearance.' ' 

And  here  again,  I  think,  we  must  agree  with  Bergson's 
analysis  of  the  illusion,  though  we  may  not  follow  him  in  all 
the  consequences  which  he  draws  from  its  rejection.  If  we 
transfer  all  real  action  to  the  past,  action  in  the  present 
becomes  a  hollow  show.  Our  life  in  the  present  is  no  longer 
real ;  it  comes  to  resemble  a  dance  of  marionettes  or  a  proces- 
sion of  shadows.  But  it  is  the  past  which  is  the  shadow — a 
shadow  cast  by  our  human  reflection;  the  present  alone  is 
real,  in  the  sense  we  are  considering,  whether  we  take  it,  with 
Bergson,  as  the  growing-point  of  an  advancing  reality  or  as 
the  temporal  appearance  of  a  reality  which  is  in  itself  com- 
plete and  eternal.  Action  therefore  is  real  here  and  now, 
whether  it  is  man's  action  or  God's ;  all  the  great  issues  are 
being  really  decided.  It  is  wrong  to  place  divine  action  in 
the  past  or  in  the  future;  but  it  is  not,  in  the  same  way, 
wrong  to  place  it  in  the  present.  The  past  and  the  future 
are  essentially  relative,  and  indeed  negative,  conceptions,  the 
no-more  and  the  not-yet;  but  the  *  is  '  of 'the  present,  if  we 
take  it  as  we  do  in  action  and  in  all  direct  experience,  is  not 
infected  by  the  same  relativity,  and  hence  there  is  in  it 
something  comparable  to  eternity.  If  we  speak  of  the 
divine  activity  as  an  eternal  act,  that  means  for  us,  if  we 
throw  it,  as  we  must,  into  terms  of  time,  an  act  which  is 
1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  42. 


370  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

being  accomplished  now,  and  which  we  are  helping  to  accom- 
plish. And  it  is  quite  in  accordance  with  this  view  that 
theologians  find  it  necessary  (as  we  saw  in  a  previous  lec- 
ture) to  supplement  the  doctrine  of  a  creation  once  for  all, 
by  saying  that  the  continuance  of  the  world  in  existence  is 
equivalent  to  a  continually  repeated  act  of  creation — a  state- 
ment which  completely  transforms  the  original  doctrine. 
The  passage  from  the  one  statement  to  the  other  represents 
the  effort  of  the  mind  to  emancipate  itself  from  the  spatial- 
ized  form  of  time.  To  place  the  creative  act  in  the  past  is 
rightly  felt  to  be  making  it  a  mere  event  in  time;  to  treat  it 
as  the  present  act  which  sustains  the  universe  is  felt,  with 
equal  right,  to  lift  it  out  of  the  temporal  sequence  and  so  to 
justify  the  predicate  eternal.  Every  statement  of  religious 
truth  must  undergo  the  same  transformation.  Christ  must 
die  daily;  the  world  is  redeemed  as  well  as  created  continu- 
ally, and  the  whole  life  of  God  is  poured  into  what  we  call 
our  human  '  Now  '. 

But  the  same  spatial  illusion,  which  he  so  successfully 
exposes  in  the  case  of  the  past,  seems  to  beset  M.  Bergson 
himself  when  he  comes  to  deal  with  the  future.  As  is  well 
known,  the  stress  which  he  lays  on  the  unpredictability,  the 
unforeseeableness,  of  the  future  has  led  to  his  being  regarded 
in  many  quarters  as  the  apostle  of  pure  contingency  and 
irrationality.  He  develops  his  own  account  of  '  creative  ' 
evolution  in  contrast  with  the  two  rival  theories  of  mech- 
anism and  finalism,  punctuating  his  statement  chiefly  by  refer- 
ence to  the  ordinary  teleological  view.  The  essence  of  his 
theory  seems  included  in  the  following  statement :  '  Reality 
appears  as  a  ceaseless  upspringing  of  something  new.  .  .  . 
This  is  already  the  case  with  our  inner  life.  For  each  of  our 
acts  we  shall  easily  find  antecedents  of  which  it  may  in  some 
sort  be  said  to  be  the  mechanical  resultant.  And  it  may 
equally  well  be  said  that  each  action  is  the  realization  of  an 
intention.  In  this  sense  mechanism  is  everywhere,  and 


xix          M.  BERGSON  AND  THE  FUTURE          371 

finality  everywhere,  in  the  evolution  of  our  conduct.  But  if 
our  action  be  one  that  involves  the  whole  of  our  person  and  is 
truly  ours,  it  could  not  have  been  foreseen,  even  though  its 
antecedents  explain  it  when  once  it  has  been  accomplished. 
And  though  it  be  the  realizing  of  an  intention,  it  differs,  as 
a  present  and  new  reality,  from  the  intention,  which  can 
never  aim  at  anything  but  recommencing  or  re-arranging  the 
past.  Mechanism  and  finalism  are,  therefore,  here  only  ex- 
ternal views  of  our  conduct.'  The  same  thing  holds  of 
organic  evolution.  '  It  would  be  futile  to  try  to  assign  to  life 
an  end  in  the  human  sense  of  the  word.  .  .  .  Of  course 
when  once  the  road  has  been  travelled,  we  can  glance  over  it, 
mark  its  direction,  note  this  in  psychological  terms,  and 
speak  as  if  there  had  been  pursuit  of  an  end.  But  of  the  road 
which  was  going  to  be  travelled,  the  human  mind  could  have 
nothing  to  say,  for  the  road  has  been  created  pari  passu  with 
the  act  of  travelling  over  it,  being  nothing  but  the  direction 
of  the  act  itself.'  In  short,  *  reality  is  undoubtedly  crea- 
tive, i.  e.  productive  of  effects  in  which  it  expands  and 
transcends  its  own  being.  These  effects  were  therefore  not 
given  in  it  in  advance,  and  so  it  could  not  take  them  for 
ends,  although  when  once  produced,  they  admit  of  a  rational 
interpretation.  .  .  .  The  future  appears  as  expanding  the 
present :  it  was  not,  therefore,  contained  in  the  present  in 
the  form  of  a  represented  end.' * 

Now  if  we  take  these  statements  simply  as  an  account  of 
the  phenomenal  process  as  it  appears  to  a  finite  spectator  or 
to  an  agent  engaged  in  the  process,  their  fidelity  to  the  facts 
is  beyond  dispute.  It  is  obvious  that  to  the  evolving  sub- 
ject the  end  is  not  present  in  the  form  of  idea :  as  regards 
organic  nature,  the  perception  of  this  is  the  basis  of  the  whole 
doctrine  of  unconscious  teleology,  so  general  since  Kant. 
And  in  the  case  of  psychical  activity,  such  as  that  of  human 
beings,  where  the  agent  can  really  set  before  himself  a  defi- 
1  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  49-55. 


372  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

nite  plan  of  action,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  result  is  never 
exhaustively  explained  by  reference  to  his  intention.  His 
intention,  as  M.  Bergson  acutely  puts  it,  can  reach  only  to  the 
repetition  or  re-arrangement  of  what  he  already  knows;  but 
the  result  of  his  reaction  upon  the  situation  may  be  some- 
thing veritably  new.  On  the  large  scale,  this  disparity  be- 
tween intention  and  result  is  a  commonplace  of  the  poets 
and  moralists.  '  Man  proposes,  God  disposes.' 

There's  a  divinity  doth  shape  our  ends, 

Rough-hew  them  how  we  will. 

And  the  story  of  Saul,  the  son  of  Kish,  who  went  out  to  seek 
his  father's  asses  and  found  a  kingdom,  has  long  been  a 
favourite  parable  with  idealist  writers.  The  whole  idealist 
view  of  history  as  a  process  of  unconscious  reason  depends, 
indeed,  on  the  recognition  of  this  disparity.  It  meets  us  in 
all  the  details  of  political  and  social  action.  The  fabric  of 
civilized  society  or  of  a  nation's  institutions  was  not  made 
according  to  any  pattern  consciously  present  as  idea,  but  is 
the  cumulative  result  of  actions  taken  to  relieve  pressing 
needs,  and  successively  modified  in  view  of  unforeseen 
effects  till  a  tolerable  modus  vivendi  was  arrived  at.  The 
path,  as  M.  Bergson  puts  it,  is  created  part  passu  with  the  act 
of  travelling  over  it.  And  yet,  although  so  little  apparently 
is  due  to  definite  human  foresight,  we  instinctively  feel,  when 
face  to  face  with  the  result,  that  some  greater  Reason  has 
guided  the  process  to  ends  so  august.  In  artistic  creation, 
again,  the  finished  work  of  art  is  not  explicable  as  the  delib- 
erate expression  or  embodiment  of  a  clearly  formed  idea. 
The  first  idea  in  the  mind  of  the  poet,  the  painter,  the  sculp- 
tor, the  musician,  is  vague,  more  like  a  feeling  flashing  into 
a  visual  or  auditory  image ;  but,  as  he  works  it  out,  it  takes 
definite  shape  and  colour  from  the  exigencies  and  felicities 
of  the  material  in  which  he  works.  It  evolves  itself  step  by 
step,  and  the  artist  would  be  puzzled  to  say  how  much  of  the 
final  result  was  included  in  his  original  conception,  and  how 


xix  UNPREDICTABILITY  373 

much  has  added  itself  as  he  went  along,  in  the  silent  com- 
merce with  his  materials. 

He  builded  better  than  he  knew, 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew. 

And  once  more,  in  the  development  of  ideals,  as  was  insisted 
in  an  earlier  lecture,  we  possess  at  the  outset  no  adequate  and 
full-orbed  idea  of  perfection.  Our  idea  grows  from  less  to 
more  in  the  stress  of  life  and  in  intercourse  with  the  many- 
sided  world.  New  features  disclose  themselves  as  we  pro- 
ceed, and  the  baser  and  ruder  elements  fall  away,  till  the 
link  of  identity  between  the  first  stage  and  the  last  is  worn 
almost  too  thin  for  recognition. 

Everywhere,  therefore,  in  experience  we  have  this  phe- 
nomenon of  the  unpredictability  of  the  consequent  from  its 
apparent  antecedents.  In  this  respect  M.  Bergson's  conten- 
tion has  a  manifest  affinity  with  the  principle  which  Profes- 
sor Bosanquet  so  often  enforces,  that  in  logic  and  life  we 
constantly  do  pass  beyond  our  premisses.  The  stream  is 
constantly  found  rising  above  its  source,  despite  the  adage, 
for  only  so  can  any  real  advance  be  accounted  for.  But  the 
idealistic  tradition  which  I  have  followed  in  the  main  in 
these  lectures  regards  this  advance  as  taking  place  in  the 
finite  evolving  subject,  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  such  a 
subject,  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole,  as  if  the 
'  expansion  and  transcendence  of  its  own  being '  in  unfore- 
seen directions  represented  the  experience  of  the  Absolute 
itself.  It  was,  indeed,  a  main  thread  in  our  argument  that 
only  through  the  presence  in  the  finite  of  an  infinite  Perfec- 
tion was  such  advance  and  self-transcendence  on  its  part 
possible.  But  M.  Bergson's  followers  and  acclaimers,  if  not 
M.  Bergson  himself,  apply  this  idea  of  growth  or  progress  in 
time  to  the  universe  as  a  whole;  and  in  the  new  possibilities, 
the  new  horizons,  which  it  opens  up  they  celebrate  their 
deliverance  from  what  James  calls  '  the  rationalistic  block- 


374  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

universe  '  or  '  the  static,  timeless,  perfect  Absolute  V  And 
to  James  certainly  novelty  means  pure  indetermination  or 
contingence.  '  That  genuine  novelties  can  occur,'  he  says, 
'  means  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  what  is  already  given, 
what  comes  may  have  to  be  treated  as  a  matter  of  chance.' 2 
The  question  in  regard  to  new  being  is,  '  Is  it  through  and 
through  the  consequence  of  older  being  or  is  it  matter  of 
chance  so  far  as  older  being  goes — which  is  the  same  thing 
as  asking:  Is  it  original,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word?  ' 3 
So  again,  praising  Renouvier  as  his  deliverer  from  *  the 
Monistic  superstition '  under  which  he  had  grown  up,  he 
says  that  Renouvier  on  his  own  principles  '  could  believe  in 
absolute  novelties,  unmediated  beginnings,  gifts,  chance, 
freedom,  acts  of  faith  '.4  M.  Bergson  himself,  although  he 
repudiates  the  idea  of  caprice,5  lays  great  stress,  as  we  have 
seen,  on  '  the  absolute  originality  and  unforeseeability  of 
the  different  stages  in  a  process  of  living  evolution  '.6  In 
the  same  context  he  uses  the  expression,  '  There  is  radical 
contingency  in  progress,  incommensurability  between  what 
goes  before  and  what  follows,  in  short,  duration  '.  So  he 
speaks  in  another  place  of  '  putting  duration  and  free  choice 
at  the  base  of  things  '.7  'If  time  ',  he  says,  '  is  not  a  kind  of 
force,  why  does  the  universe  unfold  its  successive  states  with 
a  definite  velocity?  .  .  .  Why  is  not  everything  given  at 
once,  as  on  the  film  of  the  cinematograph  ?  The  more  I  con- 
sider this  point,  the  more  it  seems  to  me  that,  if  the  future 
is  bound  to  succeed  the  present,  instead  of  being  given  along- 
side of  it,  it  is  because  the  future  is  not  altogether  determined 
at  the  present  moment  ...  it  is  because  in  the  time  taken 
up  by  this  succession  there  is  unceasingly  being  created  in 
the  concrete  whole  something  unforeseeable  and  new.' 8 


1A  Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  318,  327. 

1  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  145 ;  italics  his  own. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  145.  *  Ibid.,  p.  164.  6  Creative  Evolution,  p.  50. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  30.  T  Ibid.,  p.  291.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  358-9. 


xix          THE  SPATIAL  ILLUSION  AGAIN          375 

But  the  stress  thus  laid  upon  contingency  is  surely  due  to 
the  persistence  of  the  spatial  illusion  in  regard  to  time  from 
which  M.  Bergson  claims  to  deliver  us.  He  emancipates  us 
from  the  spectre  of  fatalistic  determination  of  the  present  by 
the  past,  by  showing  the  fallacy  involved  in  substantiating 
past  acts  and  states  like  external  forces  in  space.  But  if  we 
cease  to  hypnotize  ourselves  by  the  projected  image  of  the 
past — if  we  recognize  that  every  being  acts  from  its  own 
living  present — why  should  we  involve  ourselves  in  precisely 
similar  difficulties  by  projecting  the  future  as  a  similar  line 
in  the  opposite  direction,  and  thinking  of  the  present  as 
fatally  and  externally  determining  the  future  beforehand,  in 
such  a  way  as  to  deprive  future  actions,  when  they  occur,  of 
their  proper  reality  ?  It  was  the  determination  of  the  present 
beforehand  that  was  felt  to  be  intolerable,  and  just  that 
determination  constituted  the  illusion;  and  now  it  is  the 
same  illusion  transferred  to  the  future,  from  which  we  try 
to  escape  by  the  assertion  of  contingency  at  every  step.  But 
if  we  are  true  to  the  doctrine  of  real  duration,  we  have 
nothing  to  do  with  this  phantom  future  any  more  than  with 
the  other  phantom  of  the  past.  We  live  and  act  only  in  the 
present ;  and  every  action  has  its  own  reality  and,  in  the  case 
of  conscious  action,  its  own  freedom,  just  as  the  divine 
activity  which  sustains  and  guides  the  world  is  to  be  thought 
of  as  the  expression  of  a  present  mind  and  will,  not  as  the 
consequence  of  past  decrees  which  bind  God  himself  like  a 
fate.  The  whole  deterministic  difficulty  in  its  ordinary  form 
arises  from  our  taking  time  in  this  spatial  perspective.  If 
we  avoid  the  error  ab  initio,  therefore,  the  dilemma  of  deter- 
minism or  freedom  does  not  arise,  and  consequently  there 
is  no  temptation  to  safeguard  freedom  by  the  introduction 
of  contingency.  If,  as  M.  Bergson  says,  we  act  now  with 
our  whole  past,  and  yet  are  free,  why  should  this  be  other- 
wise in  the  future,  when  what  is  now  present  will  constitute 
part  of  the  past  which  we  carry  with  us? 


376  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

But  if  we  identify  reality,  as  has  been  suggested,  with  a 
living  present,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  mere  present 
is  just  as  much  an  abstraction  as  the  dead  past  and  the  non- 
existent future.  From  our  human  point  of  view  we  instinc- 
tively think  of  the  life  of  the  world  as  concentrated  in  a  very 
special  sense  in  the  present;  and  it  is  legitimate  to  do  so, 
because  we,  also  instinctively,  take  the  present  as  rooted  in 
an  eternal  reality,  of  which  it  is  a  partial  expression.  If  it 
were  not  for  this  eternal  background,  we  should  be  reduced 
to  the  intolerable  paradox  of  identifying  the  reality  of  the 
universe  with  what  is  shown  in  our  empirical  present.  '  Is 
the  history  of  the  world  really  reduced  ',  Lotze  asks,  '  to  the 
infinitely  thin,  for  ever  changing,  strip  of  light  which  forms 
the  Present,  marching  between  a  darkness  of  the  Past,  which 
is  done  with  and  no  longer  anything  at  all,  and  a  darkness 
of  the  Future,  which  is  also  nothing?'  Even  in  these  ex- 
pressions, as  he  truly  says,  he  is  yielding  to  the  imaginative 
tendency  which  seeks  to  soften  the  incredible.  '  For  these 
two  abysses  of  obscurity,  however  formless  and  empty, 
would  still  be  there,  would  still  afford  a  kind  of  local  habita- 
tion for  the  not-being,  into  which  it  might  have  disappeared 
or  from  which  it  might  come  forth.  But  let  any  one  try  to 
dispense  with  these  images  and  to  banish  from  thought  even 
the  two  voids,  which  limit  being:  he  will  then  feel  how 
impossible  it  is  to  get  along  with  the  naked  antithesis  of 
being  and  not-being,  and  how  unconquerable  is  the  demand 
to  be  able  to  think  even  of  that  which  is  not  as  some  unac- 
countable constituent  of  the  real.' * 

This  unconquerable  demand  means  that  we  instinctively 
treat  past,  present,  and  future  as  organic  to  one  another; 
in  dealing  with  any  present  phenomenon,  we  interpret  its 
nature  both  by  what  it  has  been  and  by  what  it  has  in  it  to 
become.  Just  so  far  as  we  succeed  in  this  interpretation,  do 
we  conceive  ourselves  to  understand  the  reality  operative 

1  Metaphysic,  Book  II,  chap,  iii,  section  157. 


xix        FULL  STOP  WITH  THE  PRESENT        377 

in  the  phenomenal  series;  and  to  understand  the  time- 
sequence  in  this  way  is,  I  have  argued,  in  an  important  sense 
to  transcend  its  temporal  aspect.  But  in  M.  Bergson's 
theory,  as  we  know,  the  temporal  aspect  is  exclusively 
emphasized,  and  his  crtique  of  teleology  comes  very  near 
a  denial  of  any  eternal  principle  in  the  development.  Hence, 
I  think,  arises  the  want  of  balance,  on  which  I  have  com- 
mented, between  his  treatment  of  the  past  and  his  treatment 
of  the  future.  It  would  be  unfair  to  accuse  M.  Bergson  of 
treating  the  present  as  a  '  mere  present ' ;  for  his  insistence 
on  the  conservation  of  the  past  in  the  present  and  its  opera- 
tion there  as  character  and  tendency  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
one  of  the  luminous  insights  of  his  philosophy.  But  with 
the  present  the  reality  of  the  universe  seems  in  his  account 
to  come  to  a  stop.  The  process  up  to  date  is  treated  as  if  it 
could  stand  alone,  and  were  intelligible  by  itself;  and  the 
future  appears,  therefore,  not  as  an  inseparable  part  of  the 
same  development,  but,  as  it  were,  something  tacked  on,  a 
realm  of  the  unknown,  and  consequently  the  appropriate 
home  of  the  contingent.  But  to  regard  the  future  in  this 
inorganic  fashion  as  something  entirely  new,  in  which  any- 
thing may  happen,1  is  to  desert  the  principle  which  has 
already  been  acknowledged  in  the  relation  of  past  and  pres- 
ent. And  it  is  also  to  forget  the  essentially  anticipatory 
character  of  conscious  action,  as  purposive,  and  all  that  is 
implied  in  the  causality  of  the  ideal.  In  point  of  fact,  by 
placing  the  fountain  of  reality  entirely  in  the  past  and  treat- 
ing it  as  a  vis  a  tergo,  M.  Bergson  really  comes  nearer  to 
the  determinism  which  he  attacks  than  is  the  case  with  a 
more  frankly  teleological  point  of  view.  '  Harmony ',  he 
says,  '  is  rather  behind  us  than  before.  It  is  due  to  an  iden- 
tity of  impulsion  and  not  to  a  common  aspiration.  It  would 

1  Recall  James's  phrases,  '  genuine  novelties ',  '  unmediated  begin- 
nings, gifts,  chance,  freedom ',  and  M.  Bergson's  own  assertions,  already 
quoted,  of  a  '  radical  contingency  in  progress,  incommensurability  be- 
tween what  goes  before  and  what  follows ', 


378  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

be  futile  to  try  to  assign  to  life  an  end  in  the  human  sense 
of  the  word.'  l  When  he  makes  this  statement — emphasiz- 
ing it  as  '  the  point  in  which  finalism  has  been  most  seriously 
mistaken  ' — he  is  speaking  at  the  biological  level ;  but  from 
life  M.  Bergson  continually  passes  to  consciousness,  and 
consciousness  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  his  all-inclusive  term. 
If  it  were  necessary,  however,  to  choose  between  placing  the 
vis  directrix  in  the  past  or  in  the  future,  it  would  be  more 
consonant  with  the  structure  of  consciousness,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  to  place  it  in  the  future — not,  indeed,  as  a 
clearly  conceived  end,  but  as  glimpses  of  a  fairer  and  a 
better,  the  '  Gleam  '  which  we  follow,  the  Good,  in  short, 
'  which  every  soul  pursues  as  the  end  of  all  its  actions,  divin- 
ing its  existence,  but  perplexed  and  unable  satisfactorily  to 
apprehend  its  nature  '.2  But  to  force  such  a  choice  upon  us 
is  a  mistake ;  the  source  of  reality  dwells  neither  in  the  past 
nor  in  the  future.  The  three  dimensions  of  Time  (if  I  may 
so  call  them)  are  rather  our  human  ways  of  refracting  the 
Eternal  Nature  in  which  we  live  and  on  which  we  draw. 

In  the  absence  of  such  a  Nature,  everything  reduces  itself 
to  pure  contingency;  for,  as  a  prius  or  mere  beginning,  the 
elan  vital  is  mere  indeterminateness.  It  is  comparable  to  the 
infinite  outgoing  activity  with  which  Fichte  proposed  to 
start.  Fichte  supplied  his  activity  with  an  Anstoss  against 
which  to  break  itself;  and  M.  Bergson,  impelled  by  the  same 
necessity,  offers  us  a  deduction  of  matter  as  the  refractory 
element  into  which  the  principle  of  life  or  free  conscious- 
ness 3  has  to  infuse  itself — the  realm  of  mechanical  necessity 
which  it  seeks,  in  his  own  phrase,  *  to  penetrate  with  con- 
tingency'.  But  if  life,  in  its  contact  with  matter,  is  thus 
comparable  to  an  impulsion  or  an  impetus,  regarded  in  itself, 

1  Creative  Evolution,  p.  54.  *  Plato,  Republic,  505. 

' '  For  want  of  a  better  word  we  have  called  it  consciousness.  But  we 
do  not  mean  the  narrowed  consciousness  that  functions  in  each  of  us.' 
'  If  our  analysis  is  correct,  it  is  consciousness  or  rather  super -conscious- 
ness, that  is  at  the  origin  of  life'  (Creative  Evolution,  pp.  250,  275). 


xix     '  AN  IMMENSITY  OF  POTENTIALITY  '     379 

he  reminds  us,  it  can  only  be  described  as  '  an  immensity  of 
potentiality  '  (virtualite).  And  in  its  action  there  is  '  prop- 
erly speaking  neither  project  nor  plan '.  The  anxiety  to 
'  transcend  finalism  '  thus  leaves  the  nature  of  the  creative 
principle  a  complete  blank.  Freedom  in  the  negative  sense 
of  indetermination  or  contingency  appears  to  be  the  only 
predicate  applicable  to  it,  and  the  only  description  of  the 
ends  which  it  seeks  to  realize.1  If  so,  it  is  impossible  not  to 
sympathize  with  Mr.  Bal four's  feelings  of  '  a  certain  incon- 
gruity between  the  substance  of  such  a  philosophy  and  the 
sentiments  associated  with  it  by  its  author.  Creation,  free- 
dom, will — these  doubtless  are  great  things;  but  we  cannot 
lastingly  admire  them  unless  we  know  their  drift.  We  can- 
not, I  submit,  rest  satisfied  with  what  differs  so  little  from 
the  haphazard;  joy  is  no  fitting  consequent  of  efforts  which 
are  so  nearly  aimless.  If  values  are  to  be  taken  into  account, 
it  is  surely  better  to  invoke  God  with  a  purpose,  than  supra- 
consciousness  with  none.' 2 

Just  at  this  point,  however,  M.  Bergson  leaves  us  in  uncer- 
tainty as  to  his  final  teaching.  Accused  of  preaching  an 
atheistic  monism,  he  has  claimed  that  his  doctrine  is  not  only 
not  inconsistent  with  Theism,  but  points  directly  to  that 
conclusion.  In  a  letter  printed  in  1912  he  tells  us  that  the 
arguments  of  his  three  books  should  leave  us  with  '  a  clear 
idea  of  a  free  and  creating  God,  producing  matter  and  life  at 
once,  whose  creative  effort  is  continued,  in  a  vital  direction, 
by  the  evolution  of  species  and  the  construction  of  human 
personalities  '.  The  letter  is  quoted  by  M.  Le  Roy  at  the 
close  of  his  appreciative  sketch,  A  New  Philosophy;  and 
M.  Bergson  expressly  endorses  M.  Le  Roy's  protest,  in  the 

1 '  It  seizes  upon  matter  .  .  .  and  strives  to  introduce  into  it  the  largest 
possible  amount  of  indetermination  and  liberty.'  (p.  265.)  'A  living 
being  represents  a  certain  sum  of  contingency  entering  into  the  world.' 
(p.  276.) 

z  Hibbert  Journal,  October  1911,  at  the  close  of  a  sympathetic  appreci- 
ation, entitled  '  Creative  Evolution  and  Philosophic  Doubt '. 


380  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

context,  against  the  habit  of  '  asking  an  author  continually 
to  do  something  other  than  he  has  done,  or,  in  what  he  has 
done,  to  give  us  the  whole  of  his  thought '.  He  accepts 
M.  Le  Roy's  description  of  his  method  of  proceeding,  in  his 
successive  volumes,  from  problem  to  problem,  and  dealing 
with  each  according  to  its  specific  and  original  nature,  and 
acknowledges  the  possibility,  consequently,  of  further  devel- 
opments of  his  doctrine  upon  the  basis  of  an  analysis  of 
moral  and  religious  experience.1 

If  we  give  the  Philosophy  of  Change  such  a  theistic  back- 
ground, it  becomes  perhaps  a  less  striking  doctrine,  but  it 
ceases  to  present  the  fundamental  incredibility  of  which  I 
complain.  '  Reality  is  undoubtedly  creative,  i.  e.  produc- 
tive of  effects  in  which  it  transcends  and  expands  its  own 
being.' 2  Taken  in  a  phenomenological  reference,  there  is 
no  difficulty  in  recognizing  the  truth  of  such  a  statement. 
The  '  creative  '  aspect  of  the  evolutionary  process  in  this 
respect,  and  the  '  increment  of  being '  which  successive 
stages  bring  with  them,  was  frequently  emphasized  in  our 

1 '  In  this  direction  I  should  myself  say  exactly  what  you  have  said ' 
(letter  to  M.  Le  Roy,  quoted  in  his  Preface).  M.  Bergson,  in  the  origi- 
nal letter  in  reply  to  his  critics,  had  himself  referred  to  the  fact  that  he 
had  not  yet  dealt  with  the  problems  of  morality.  It  is,  I  think,  permis- 
sible to  mention  that  at  a  discussion  in  the  Edinburgh  University  Philo- 
sophical Society  in  May  1914,  during  the  delivery  of  his  first  course  of 
Gifford  Lectures,  M.  Bergson  somewhat  surprised  the  members  of  the 
Society  by  saying,  when  pressed  on  this  ultimate  question,  that  he  did 
not  profess  to  have  a  metaphysical  system.  Each  of  his  volumes  repre- 
sented his  concentration  upon  a  specific  problem,  for  which  he  had 
sought  to  find  an  appropriate  solution  by  soaking  his  mind,  as  it  were, 
in  the  relevant  facts.  In  this  way  he  had  been  led  from  one  problem  to 
another,  while  other  important  problems  remained  unexplored.  But  he 
was  inclined  to  distinguish  between  philosophy  as  the  outcome  and  solu- 
tion of  such  definite  problems  and  the  more  or  less  'hypothetical '  views 
one  might  hold  on  larger  and  more  ultimate  questions.  The  whole 
account  of  Life  and  its  creative  evolution,  with  '  the  ideal  genesis  of 
matter ',  he  appeared  prepared,  accordingly,  to  regard  as  the  rationale  of 
a  phenomenal  process,  while  accepting  (as  a  hypothetical  belief  in  the 
sense  just  indicated)  the  idea  of  a  Creator,  the  end  of  whose  action 
was  '  the  creation  of  creators  '. 

*  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  49-50. 


xix  A  THEISTIC  INTERPRETATION  381 

first  series  of  lectures,  as  well  as  the  unforeseeableness  of 
each  new  stage  from  the  standpoint  of  the  old.  Such  prog- 
ress or  advance  appeared  a  fundamental  and  undeniable 
fact;  and  we  found  it  intelligible  on  the  assumption  of  an 
absolute  source  of  the  perfections  successively  revealed. 
The  incredibility  only  arises,  if  we  take  '  reality '  in  an  all- 
inclusive  sense  to  designate  the  All,  and  to  include,  there- 
fore, the  God  of  whose  progressive  activity  the  advancing 
wave  of  life  is  the  expression. 

I  do  not  wish  to  snatch  a  verbal  victory  by  playing  on 
the  word  Universe  or  Infinite  or  the  All — by  arguing,  I 
mean,  that  what  is,  by  definition,  all-inclusive  and  complete 
is  not  susceptible  of  growth,  addition,  or  improvement.  It 
is  possible  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  universe  in  the  sense  of 
a  single  systematic  whole.  Pluralism,  for  example,  means, 
I  suppose,  that  the  universe  is,  in  the  last  resort,  an  aggre- 
gate ;  although  a  certain  amount  of  system  or  coherence  may 
be  traced  among  its  separate  facts,  and  this  order  may  be 
extended  by  the  mind  and  will  of  human  and  other  intelli- 
gencies.  But  even  if  the  universe  be  taken  as  a  mere  fact  or 
sum  of  facts,  it  is  there,  once  for  all,  in  its  nature  as  it  is. 
The  '  Being  is  '  of  Parmenides  is,  in  this  reference,  the  last 
word  that  can  be  said  about  it.  It  is  impossible  to  get  away 
from  the  existent  fact  and  its  nature.  Whatever  combina- 
tions may  result  within  it,  whatever  qualities  it  may  exhibit, 
must  be  due  to  its  own  inherent  constitution.  It  is  easy  for 
a  critic  to  appeal  to  material  and  social  combinations  or 
syntheses,  where  we  get  qualities  in  the  compound  or  the 
social  group  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  elements  or 
members  separately.  But  the  novelty  in  such  cases  is  not, 
as  it  were,  a  creation  or  a  spurt  out  of  nothing;  it  is  the 
result  of  the  togetherness  of  existing  elements  and  the  mutual 
reactions  grounded  in  their  natures.  So  far  as  it  goes,  it  is 
proof  that  the  universe  does  not  consist  of  bits  of  unrelated 
stuff  lying  about,  but  is  a  fact  with  a  certain  amount  of 


382  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

systematic  structure  discernible  among  its  parts.  Qualities, 
therefore,  which  are  educed  by  reaction  to  an  environment, 
physical  or  social,  cannot  be  regarded  as  extraneous  to  the 
universe  as  a  whole.  Moral  progress  might  seem  the  most 
plausible  case  of  such  real  novelty  through  the  creation  of 
fresh  values.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  verdict  of  the  moral 
consciousness  on  its  own  advance  emphatically  repudiates 
the  idea  suggested  that  it  is  actually  creating  these  values 
and  raising  the  moral  level  of  the  universe.  The  reality  of 
the  ideal  and  its  infinite  transcendence  of  finite  attainment 
is  the  very  note  of  moral  and  religious  experience. 

I  am  confirmed  in  my  view  of  the  impossibility  of  regard- 
ing the  universe  as  a  growing  whole,  by  observing  that  those 
who  hold  to  the  idea  of  what  James  calls  '  the  strung-along 
unfinished  world  in  time  V  and  who  advocate  the  creed  of 
'  Meliorism  ',  do  not  make  it  clear,  and  apparently  are  not 
themselves  clear,  whether  the  idea  of  progress  and  better- 
ment is  to  be  applied  to  the  universe  as  a  whole  or  only  to 
certain  beings  in  it.  M.  Bergson's  somewhat  ambiguous 
attitude  we  have  just  considered.  It  is  not  clear  whether  he 
regards  the  creative  source  of  the  life-movement  as  also 
growing  from  less  to  more  in  the  process  of  experience. 
William  James  falls  back  upon  the  notion  of  a  finite  God. 
He  distinguishes  sharply  between  God  and  the  Absolute. 
God  is  not  the  All,  but,  as  he  puts  it  in  a  characteristic  phrase, 
'  one  of  the  caches  ',  an  individual  in  the  universe,  '  finite, 
either  in  power  or  in  knowledge,  or  in  both  at  once  ',  '  hav- 
ing an  environment,  being  in  time  and  working  out  a  history 
just  like  ourselves  '.2  But  again  it  is  not  clear  whether  this 
God  is  morally  perfect  to  begin  with — in  which  case  the 
development  and  progress  would  consist  simply  in  the  moral 
enlightenment  and  betterment  of  human  beings  and  similar 

1A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  128.    Cf .  Pragmatism,  p.  264 :  '  the  whole 
spread-out  and  strung-along  mass  of  phenomena '. 
*A  Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  44,  311,  318. 


xix  AMBIGUITY  OF  MELIORISM  383 

races  in  other  regions  of  the  universe — or  whether  the  finite 
God  is  himself  conceived  as  growing  in  insight  and  in  moral 
wisdom  through  the  lessons  of  experience,  and  working  out 
his  own  character  as  he  proceeds  with  his  beneficent  work. 
In  the  latter  case,  one  is  at  a  loss  to  see  why  the  title  of  God 
should  be  bestowed  on  an  individual  essentially  of  the 
human  type,  though,  no  doubt,  on  a  larger  scale  and  at 
a  higher  stage  of  development;  and  one  is  bound  to  con- 
clude that  such  a  developing  demigod  would  give  the  same 
account  of  his  own  development  as  the  moral  and  religious 
man  among  ourselves.  He  would  describe  it  as  a  new  insight 
into  the  nature  of  things,  due  to  the  leading  of  a  higher  God, 
who  would  be  God  indeed.  It  seems  to  me  impossible  to 
override  the  testimony  of  the  religious  consciousness  on  this 
point.  As  we  have  contended,  such  experience  is  only  pos- 
sible to  a  finite  being  rooted  in  an  infinite  nature.  And  from 
an  ultimate  metaphysical  point  of  view,  it  appears  to  me,  our 
conclusion  must  be  that  progress  is  predicable  only  of  the 
part  which  can  interact  with  other  parts,  and,  in  such  inter- 
action, has  the  nature  of  the  whole  to  draw  upon.  It  is 
unintelligible  as  applied  to  the  whole,  and  the  temporal  view 
of  things  cannot  therefore  be  ultimate  or  all-inclusive.1 
1  See  Supplementary  Note  E  (God  and  the  Absolute),  p.  430. 

NOTE  ON  M.  BERGSON'S  DOCTRINE  OF  TIME 

There  are  other  points  in  which  M.  Bergson's  account  of 
time  seems  open  to  criticism.  He  has  rightly  exposed  the 
errors  which  result  from  the  persistence  of  spatial  imagery  in 
our  conceptions  of  time.  But  in  his  polemic  against  the  idea 
of  the  line,  with  its  juxtaposition  of  our  past  states  as  mutually 
external  points,  he  comes  himself  very  near  to  denying  any 
knowledge  of  the  past  as  past.  '  Pure  duration',  we  are  told, 
would  be  '  nothing  but  a  succession  of  qualitative  changes 
which  melt  into  and  permeate  one  another,  without  precise  out- 
lines, without  any  tendency  to  externalize  themselves  in  rela- 
tion to  one  another,  without  any  affiliation  with  number:  it 
would  be  pure  heterogeneity.'  According  to  M.  Bergson's 


384  A  GROWING  UNIVERSE  LECT. 

most  frequent  comparison,  the  sensations  '  add  themselves 
dynamically  to  one  another  and  organize  themselves  like  the 
successive  notes  of  a  tune  by  which  we  allow  ourselves  to  be 
lulled  and  soothed'.1  The  result  is  comparable  to  the  summa- 
tion of  slight  but  continuously  repeated  stimuli,  or,  again,  '  this 
organization  of  units  in  the  depths  of  the  soul  is  a  wholly 
dynamic  process,  not  unlike  the  purely  qualitative  way  in  which 
an  anvil,  if  it  could  feel,  would  realize  a  series  of  blows  from 
a  hammer'.2  But  this  qualitative  survival  of  the  past  in  the 
present  does  not  seem  to  give  us  more  than  a  peculiarly  modi- 
fied present;  or,  at  least,  the  penumbra  of  the  past  suggested 
by  the  analogies  is  so  vague  as  hardly  to  suffice  for  the  sharp 
rudimentary  distinction  between  the'  now  '  and  the  '  no  longer', 
much  less  for  a  dated  knowledge  of  our  mental  history.  M. 
Bergson's  delicate  psychological  analysis  of  the  phenomena  he 
cites  in  illustration  seems  to  divert  his  attention  from  the 
simpler  experiences  of  loss  or  deprivation  and  of  waiting  ex- 
pectancy, in  which  the  child's  consciousness  of  the  no-more 
and  the  not-yet  originates.  Our  dated  knowledge  of  past  and 
future  is  a  gradual  development  of  this  rudimentary  contrast. 
But  because  our  perspective  becomes  more  definite  in  both  di- 
rections, it  surely  does  not  lose  its  original  temporal  character. 
Nor  can  I  reconcile  myself  to  phrases  which  describe  time  as 
'  the  very  stuff  of  reality'.  This  phrase  is  constantly  repeated 
in  slightly  varying  forms  by  M.  Bergson  and  his  followers. 
Thus  Mr.  Wildon  Carr  tells  us  that  '  when  we  consider  a  living 
being,  we  feel  that  time  is  the  very  essence  of  its  life,  the 
whole  meaning  of  its  reality'.3  Or  again  he  speaks  of  'a 
living  thing,  whose  whole  existence  is  time'.  There  are  two 
ways,  he  says,  in  which  we  may  think  of  time,  '  one  in  which 
it  makes  no  difference  to  reality,  and  the  other  in  which  it  is 
the  reality.  .  .  .  The  answer  that  philosophy  must  give  is  that 
time  is  real,  the  stuff  of  which  things  are  made.' 4  Except  as 
transparent  metaphors,  intended  to  emphasize  the  reality  of 
process  or  change  as  against  the  eternity  of  the  metaphysicians 
he  is  attacking,  such  expressions  seem  quite  unmeaning. 
Change  or  development  in  time  may  be  a  fundamental  feature 
of  reality,  but  it  cannot  literally  be  reality,  life,  or  conscious- 

1  Time  and  Free  Will,  pp.  103-4.  '  Ibid.,  p.  123. 

*  Henri  Bergson,  p.  17  (People's  Books). 

*  Ibid.,  p.  19.    M.  Bergson  uses  almost  identical  language  in  Creative 
Evolution,  pp.  4,  41,  254,  257,  334-5. 


xix  THE  UNIVERSAL  FLUX  385 

ness.  Obviously  change  and  duration  is  an  empty  abstraction 
apart  from  some  nature  or  content  which  changes  or  '  dures'. 
An  ultra-Heraclitean  doctrine  of  universal  flux,  such  as  the 
literal  sense  of  the  words  implies,  would  mean  the  discarding 
of  all  qualitative  distinctions  whatsoever.  Passages  might  be 
quoted  in  support  of  the  view  that  this  is  the  hidden  truth  of 
the  Bergsonian  thought.  '  Reality  is  a  flowing,'  says  Mr.  Carr. 
'  This  does  not  mean  that  everything  moves,  changes,  and  be- 
comes ;  science  and  common  experience  tell  us  that.  It  means 
that  movement,  change,  becoming,  is  everything  that  there  is, 
there  is  nothing  else.  .  .  .  You  have  not  grasped  the  central 
idea  of  this  philosophy,  you  have  not  perceived  true  duration, 
you  have  not  got  the  true  idea  of  change  and  becoming  until 
you  perceive  duration,  change,  movement,  becoming,  to  be 
reality,  the  whole  and  only  reality.' 1 

These  sentences  seem  based  on  some  very  Heraclitean  state- 
ments in  the  last  chapter  of  Creative  Evolution,  where  M. 
Bergson  attributes  the  partial  fixation  of  the  universal  flux,  as 
things  and  qualities,  to  '  the  cinematographical  instinct  of  our 
thought'.  '  But  in  reality  the  body  is  changing  form  at  every 
moment,  or  rather  there  is  no  form,  since  form  is  immobile  and 
the  reality  is  movement.' 2  But  I  am  loath  to  believe  that  it  is 
M.  Bergson's  genuine  intention  to  attribute  all  qualitative  dis- 
tinction to  the  distorting  function  of  the  intellect,  and  to  iden- 
tify reality  with  the  qualityless  abstraction  of  change  or  move- 
ment as  such.  An  unearthly  ballet  of  bloodless  categories 
would  be  concrete  in  comparison. 

1  Henri  Bergson,  pp.  28-9. 

z  Creative  Evolution,  p.  319  (italics  mine).     Cf.  pp.  333-5. 


LECTURE  XX 

PLURALISM 
EVIL  AND  SUFFERING 

WE  have  touched  in  the  preceding  lecture  on  the  pluralistic 
position  and  the  idea  of  a  finite  God,  but  Pluralism  in  various 
forms  is  so  current — I  had  almost  said,  so  fashionable — at 
the  present  moment,  that  it  seems  to  call  for  some  further 
examination  on  its  merits.  We  have  already  encountered  it, 
in  connexion  with  the  idea  of  Creation,  in  Professor  Howi- 
son's  doctrine  of  eternal  finite  selves.  Founding  on  the 
characteristic  feature  of  a  self  or  person,  that  it  cannot  be 
made  or  fashioned  like  a  thing,  ab  extra,  but  seems  rather  to 
make  itself,  and  that  it  acts,  moreover,  always  from  its  own 
centre,  and  unhesitatingly  regards  its  acts  as  its  own,  Pro- 
fessor Howison  insisted,  as  we  saw,  on  treating  finite  persons 
as  ontologically  underived,  or  existent  in  their  own  right. 
He  acknowledged  at  the  same  time  that,  as  regards  their 
animating  ideals,  they  all  reflect  the  nature  of  a  divine  or 
central  Mind,  and  thus  constitute,  together  with  it,  a  single 
system  of  reality.  As  in  Leibnitz,  a  real  or  ontological 
Pluralism  is  thus  combined  with  an  ideal  '  harmony  ',  and 
the  unity  of  the  universe  is  supposed  to  be  thereby  saved. 
But  again,  just  as  Leibnitz  forgets  the  independent  self-sub- 
sistence of  the  monads  when  he  treats  them  as  created  by 
God  and  speaks  of  them  as  '  fulgurations  '  of  the  divine, 
so  we  found  that  Professor  Howison's  statements  as  to  the 
constant  reference  of  the  finite  selves  to  their  divine  centre, 
and  his  view  of  the  divine  nature  as  the  final  cause  of  the 
development  which  takes  place  in  these  selves,  constitute 
a  virtual  abandonment  of  the  ontological  Pluralism  which 
he  champions. 


xx  DR.  RASHDALL'S  THEORY  387 

Dr.  Rashdall,  inasmuch  as  he  expressly  holds  the  finite 
selves  to  be  created,  would  disavow  the  imputation  of  Plural- 
ism. But  he  has  repeatedly  introduced  the  idea  of  the 
finiteness  of  God  as  limited  by  other  selves,  and  has  con- 
tended, accordingly,  for  a  distinction  between  God  and  the 
Absolute.  '  The  Absolute  cannot  be  identified  with  God, 
so  long  as  God  is  thought  of  as  a  self-conscious  Being.  The 
Absolute  must  include  God  and  all  other  consciousnesses, 
not  as  isolated  and  unrelated  beings,  but  as  intimately  related 
(in  whatever  way)  to  Him  and  to  one  another,  and  as 
forming  with  Him  a  system  or  Unity.  .  .  .  God  and  the 
spirits  are  the  Absolute — not  God  alone.  Together  they 
form  a  Unity,  but  that  Unity  is  not  the  unity  of  self -con- 
sciousness.' 1  Reality  is  thus  '  a  community  of  persons ', 
or  in  Dr.  McTaggart's  phrase  '  a  society  '.2  It  is  true,  he 
protests  against  the  idea  of  a  limitation  ab  extra,  by  a  hostile 
power  or  an  independent  matter;  the  limitation  in  question 
is,  in  the  language  of  the  theologians,  a  self-limitation.  But, 
as  Professor  Ward  pertinently  says,  commenting  on  this 
phrase,  '  self -limitation  seems  to  imply  a  prior  state  in  which 
it  was  absent,  whereas  a  limitation  held  to  be  permanent — as 
we  hold  creation  to  be — suggests  some  ultimate  dualism 
rather  than  an  ultimate  unity  '.3  And  if  we  hold,  as  Pro- 
fessor Ward  says,  that '  God  is  God  only  as  being  creative  ',* 

1  The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  ii.  239-40. 

*  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  391-2. 

*  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  243. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  234.     'If  creation  means  anything,'  says  Professor  Ward 
in  the  same  context,  '  it  means  something  so  far  involved  in  the  divine 
essence  that  we  are  entitled  to  say,  as  Hegel  was  fond  of  saying,  that 
"  without  the  world,  God  is  not  God  ".'     The  saying  which  Professor 
Ward  thus  frankly  adopts,  suggests  to  Dr.  Rashdall  the  picture  of  '  God 
as  perpetually  annexed  by  some  unintelligible  fate  to  a  world  quite  alien 
to  His  own  inner  nature  as  to  some  Siamese  twin  from  whom  He  would 
perchance,  but  cannot,  part'  (Contentio  Veritatis,  p.  33).    But  this  is 
inconsistent  with  his  own  subsequent  description  of  the  limitation  im- 
plied in  the  creation  of  other  spirits  as  '  not  an  arbitrary  self-limitation 
but  one  which  necessarily  springs  from  the  nature  and  character  of  God ' 
(p.  37).    Why  should  the  necessity  of  the  divine  nature  be  resented 


388  PLURALISM  LECT. 

the  deceptive  prius  disappears,  and  with  it  the  wholly  inap- 
propriate conception  of  limitation.  This  was  the  gist  of  our 
argument  in  Lecture  VII.  Why  should  the  creation  of  finite 
spirits  be  treated  like  a  pegging  out  of  claims  in  a  hinterland, 
by  each  of  which  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  original 
proprietor  are  proportionately  diminished  ?  Surely  the  older 
theologians  were  right  in  regarding  the  existence  of  spirits 
not  as  an  impoverishment  but  as  an  enrichment  of  the  divine 
life.  The  divine  life  is,  in  short,  the  concrete  fact  of  this 
inter-communion. 

In  this  sense  there  is  no  difficulty  in  accepting  Professor 
Ward's  definition  of  the  Absolute  as  '  God-and-the-world  V 
regarded  as  the  single  eternal  Fact.  But  it  is  not  quite  the 
same  with  Dr.  Rashdall's  phrase,  '  God  and  the  spirits ' ; 
for  in  spite  of  the  creative  function  assigned  to  God,  the 
suggestion  of  the  phrase  is  co-existence  on  terms  of  mutual 
exclusion.  And  this  impression  is  strengthened  when  we 
are  told  that  'the  ultimate  Being  is  a  single  Power,  if  we 
like  we  may  even  say  a  single  Being,  who  is  manifested  in 
a  plurality  of  consciousnesses,  one  consciousness  which  is 
omniscient  and  eternal,  and  many  consciousnesses  which 
are  of  limited  knowledge,  which  have  a  beginning,  and 
some  of  which,  it  is  possible  or  probable,  have  an  end  '.2 
And  when  Dr.  Rashdall  goes  on  to  say  that  we  may  '  regard 
all  the  separate  "  centres  of  consciousness  "  as  "  manifesta- 
tions "  of  a  single  Being ',  or  even  as  a  single  '  Substance 
which  reveals  itself  in  many  different  consciousnesses  V  we 

as  an  unintelligible  fate?  Dr.  Rashdall  emphasizes  the  importance  of 
recognizing  '  a  causative  relation  between  the  supreme  Spirit  and  ihe 
other  spirits'  (p.  34),  but  if  I  may  quote  Professor  Ward  again  in  this 
connexion,  '  Creation  is  not  to  be  brought  under  the  category  of  transient 
causation.  Nor  can  we,  regarding  it  from  the  side  of  God,  bring  it 
under  the  category  of  immanent  causation  as  being  a  change  in  Him, 
unless  indeed  we  abandon  the  position  that  God  is  God  only  as  being 
creative*  (Realm  of  Ends,  p.  234). 

1  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  241.      *  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  vol.  ii,  p.  241. 

*  Philosophy  and  Religion,  p.  105. 


xx  GOD  AS  '  ONE  OF  THE  SELVES  '  389 

feel  irresistibly  that  by  such  expressions  we  are  being  com- 
mitted to  a  view  of  God  as  '  one  of  the  caches  ',  for  we 
are  treating  Him  not  as  the  ultimate  Reality  but  as  one  of 
a  number  of  '  separate  '  appearances.  But  there  is  surely 
a  singular  impropriety  in  placing  God  and  men  in  the  same 
numerical  series,  and  in  speaking  as  if  we  and  God  together, 
in  a  species  of  joint-ownership,  constituted  the  sum-total 
of  existence.  Dr.  Rashdall  speaks  of  '  that  all-fertile  source 
of  philosophical  error,  the  misapplication  of  spatial  meta- 
phors. Minds  are  not  Chinese  boxes  that  can  be  put  "  in- 
side "  one  another  V  But  we  do  not  get  away  from  spatial 
metaphors  by  speaking  of  separate  and  mutually  exclusive 
centres  of  consciousness.  And  if  the  assertion  of  the  per- 
sonality of  God  is  to  lead  us  to  the  result  that  '  all  the  con- 
clusions which  are  applicable  to  each  particular  self  in  his 
relation  to  another  seem  to  be  equally  applicable  to  the 
relations  between  God  and  any  other  spirit  ',2  we  must  reply 
that  it  is  ultimately  unmeaning  to  treat  the  universal  as  one 
of  the  particulars.  To  speak  of  God  in  this  sense  as  '  one  of 
the  selves  '  is  to  justify  all  the  criticisms  which  treat  per- 
sonality as  a  limitation  inapplicable  to  the  sustaining  and 
containing  Life  of  all  the  worlds.  Besides  the  unescapable 
associations  of  spatial  metaphor,  the  controversy  seems  to 
me  to  be  due  to  the  substantiation  of  the  form  of  conscious- 
ness apart  from  its  content  or  constituent  nature.  It  was 
the  substantiation  of  the  logical  form  of  consciousness,  as 
I  argued  long  ago,3  which  led  to  the  theory  of  the  universal 

1  Personal  Idealism,  p.  388.  2  Ibid.,  p.  386. 

1  In  the  concluding  pages  of  Hegelianism  and  Personality.  I  have 
many  times  regretted,  in  view  of  the  interpretations  put  upon  it  and  the 
applications  made  of  it,  my  use  in  these  pages  of  the  term  '  impervious ' 
to  describe  the  nature  of  a  self  or  personality.  The  exclusiveness  of  the 
self,  especially  in  its  relations  to  the  divine,  was,  I  have  little  doubt,  too 
strongly  emphasized  in  my  argument.  But  the  obnoxious  term  has  to 
be  understood  in  the  context  in  which  it  occurs.  The  argument  was 
directed  against  the  fusion  of  real  selves  in  a  logical  universal  or  (to  put 
it  in  a  frankly  spatial  metaphor)  the  identification  of  all  selves  at  a 
single  point  of  being.  What  I  emphasized,  as  against  this  attempt,  was 


390  PLURALISM  LECT. 

Self,  as  an  identical  Subject  which  thinks  in  all  thinkers. 
And  this  unification  of  consciousness  in  a  single  Self  was 
fatal,  I  argued,  to  the  real  selfhood  either  of  God  or  man. 
But  we  are  equally  substantiating  a  formal  unity,  if  we  cut 
loose  the  individual  selves  from  the  common  content  of  the 
world  and  treat  them  as  self-existent  and  mutually  inde- 
pendent units.  We  are  then  obliged  to  proceed  to  represent 
the  universal  Life  in  which  they  share  as  another  unit  of 
the  same  type,  and  difficulties  immediately  arise  as  to  the 
relation  between  the  great  Self  and  its  minor  prototypes. 
Thought  sways  between  a  Pluralism,  disguised  or  undi- 
guised,  and  a  Pantheism  which  obliterates  all  real  individu- 
ality. But  by  the  existence  of  the  personality  of  God  we  do 
not  mean  the  existence  of  a  self-consciousness  so  conceived. 
We  mean  that  the  universe  is  to  be  thought  of,  in  the  last 
resort,  as  an  Experience  and  not  as  an  abstract  content — an 
experience  not  limited  to  the  intermittent  and  fragmentary 
glimpses  of  this  and  the  other  finite  consciousness,  but 
resuming  the  whole  life  of  the  world  in  a  fashion  which  is 
necessarily  incomprehensible  save  by  the  Absolute  itself.1 

the  uniqueness  of  each  self.  I  took  the  self,  and  I  still  take  it,  as  the 
apex  of  the  principle  of  individuation  by  which  the  world  exists.  Hence 
the  phrase  that  each  self  is  '  impervious  ' — not,  it  may  be  observed,  to  all 
the  influences  of  the  universe  but  '  to  other  selves ' — '  impervious  in  a 
fashion  of  which  the  impenetrability  of  matter  is  a  faint  analogue '.  In 
other  words,  to  suppose  a  coincidence  or  literal  identification  of  several 
selves,  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Universal  Self  demands,  is  even  more 
transparently  self-contradictory  than  that  two  bodies  should  occupy  the 
same  space.  Apart  from  crudity  of  expression  this  still  seems  to  me 
obvious,  and  it  may  be  considered  to  underlie  the  argument  in  several  of 
the  preceding  lectures.  But  I  trust  there  is  now  more  justice  done  to  the 
identity  of  content  which  binds  the  selves  together  as  members  of  one 
universe. 

1  We  call  God  personal  because  in  personality  is  revealed  the  highest 
we  know,  and  it  is  better,  therefore,  as  Mr.  Bradley  says,  to  affirm  per- 
sonality than  to  call  the  Absolute  impersonal.  The  epithet,  like  the  state- 
ments of  the  creeds,  is  the  denial  of  an  error  rather  than  a  definitely 
articulated  affirmation  of  ascertained  fact.  And  if  the  affirmation  of 
personality  were  taken  to  imply  identity  of  conditions,  then,  but  for  its 
tendency  to  become  a  merely  empty  name,  supra-personal  would  ob- 
viously more  appropriately  express  our  meaning. 


xx  DR.  McTAGGART'S  ABSOLUTE  391 

Equally  incomprehensible  from  the  finite  standpoint  must 
it  be,  how  the  measure  of  individual  independence  and 
initiative  which  we  enjoy  is  compatible  with  the  creative 
function  or  the  all-pervasive  activity  of  the  divine.1  But 
in  whatever  sense  or  in  whatever  way  our  thoughts  and 
actions  form  part  of  the  divine  experience,  we  know  that  it 
is  a  sense  which  does  not  prevent  them  from  being  ours. 
We  were  agreed  that  no  speculative  difficulties  could  over- 
ride this  primary  certainty. 

Dr.  McTaggart  presents  his  theory  as  a  form  of  Idealism, 
and  he  also  would  repudiate  the  label  of  Pluralism,  inas- 
much as  he  believes  the  universe  to  be  a  systematic  whole. 
But  as  compared  with  the  views  of  Professor  Howison  and 
Dr.  Rashdall  which  we  have  been  considering,  Dr.  McTag- 
gart's  theory  is  more  consistently  and  uncompromisingly 
pluralistic,  in  so  far  as  it  dispenses  altogether  with  the  cen- 
trality  of  reference  which  is  signified  by  the  conception  of 
God.  The  unity  of  his  Absolute  is  that  of  a  society.  His 
favourite  analogy  is  '  a  College  ',2  although  he  has  the  grace 
to  admit  that  '  of  course  the  Absolute  is  a  far  more  perfect 
unity  than  a  College  '.  As  a  unity  of  persons,  though  not 
itself  a  person,  a  College  is  'a  spiritual  unity';  but,  as  he 
candidly  and  somewhat  disconcertingly  reminds  us,  '  every 
goose-club,  every  gang  of  thieves  '  has  a  similar  right  to  the 
term.3  Dr.  McTaggart's  theory  of  the  Absolute  is  in  reality 
an  immediate  consequence  of  his  view  of  the  self  as  '  a  sub- 
stance existing  in  its  own  right  '.4  '  This  does  not  mean  ', 
he  says,  'that  any  self  could  exist  independently  and  in 
isolation  from  all  others.  Each  self  can  only  exist  in  virtue 
of  its  connexion  with  all  the  others  and  with  the  Abso- 
lute which  is  their  unity.  But  this  is  a  relation,  not  of 


1  As  I  have  already  argued  in  Lecture  XV.    Cf .  supra,  pp.  285-93. 
1  As  Mr.  Marett  wittily  put  it,  '  It  is  Trinity  basking  in  a  perpetual 
Long  Vacation '. 
3  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  86.  *  Ibid.,  p.  37. 


392  PLURALISM  ,      LECT. 

subordination,  but  of  reciprocal  dependence.'  The  Absolute 
is  exhaustively  expressed  in  a  certain  number  of  such  '  fun- 
damental differentiations  ',  and  is  thus  '  a  system  of  indi- 
viduals of  which  each  is  conscious  of  the  other  ';  and  such 
a  system,  he  contends,  cannot  be  accused  of  '  atomism ', 
for  it  is  *  bound  together  by  the  mutual  knowledge  of  its 
parts  '. a 

The  Idealism  which  Dr.  McTaggart  professes  is  defined 
by  himself,  almost  in  Berkeley's  words,  as  the  doctrine 
'  that  nothing  can  exist  but  persons — conscious  beings  who 
know,  will,  and  feel  '.2  The  position  is  open,  therefore,  to 
the  general  objections  which  have  been  brought  against 
Monadism  and  Mentalism.  But  special  difficulties  are 
created  for  Dr.  McTaggart's  variety  of  the  theory  by  the 
absence  of  any  central  Monad  or  Monas  Monadum;  for 
there  appears  to  be  no  self  in  this  '  harmonious  system  of 
selves  ' 3  which  knows  all  the  other  selves.  How  then  do  we 
know  that  they  form  a  harmonious  system?  Can  we, 
indeed,  reasonably  speak  of  system  or  harmony  at  all  except 
in  view  of  some  mind  for  which  it  exists?  And  again,  the 
ordinary  way  in  which  subjective  idealism  meets  the  scien- 
tific difficulties  as  to  the  existence  of  things  unperceived  or 
completely  unknown  by  any  finite  spirit — namely,  by  at- 
tributing to  them  an  existence  for  an  eternal  and  omnis- 
cient Spirit — is  not  open  to  Dr.  McTaggart,  whose  uni- 
verse accordingly  dissolves  into  a  number  of  fragmentary 
subjective  worlds  with  no  provision  for  their  co-ordination 
and  no  guarantee  that,  if  pieced  together,  the  result  would 
be  a  coherent  whole.4  Dr.  McTaggart  admits  that,  if  his 
theory  is  to  work,  '  it  would  seem  to  follow  that  every  self 
must  be  in  complete  and  conscious  harmony  with  the  whole 

1  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  62. 
1  Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  251. 
1  Ibid.,  p.  248. 

4  Dr.  Rashdall  has  urged  these  difficulties.    Cf.  Philosophy  and  Re- 
ligion, pp.  123-6,  and  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xv,  pp.  542-6. 


xx     ETERNAL  AND  PERFECT  SELVES    393 

of  the  universe  V  and  he  admits  likewise  that  this  is  not  in 
accordance  with  the  facts  as  known  to  us.  But  he  is  equal 
to  the  emergency,  for  the  difficulty  disappears  if  we  assume 
that  all. selves  are  perfect;  and  that,  he  says,  would  seem  to 
be  '  our  proper  conclusion  '.2  'If  an  opponent  should 
remind  me  of  the  notorious  imperfections  in  the  present 
lives  of  each  of  us,  I  should  point  out  that  every  self  is  ... 
in  reality  eternal,  and  that  its  true  qualities  are  only  seen 
in  so  far  as  it  is  considered  as  eternal.  Sub  specie  aeternita- 
tis,  every  self  is  perfect.  Sub  specie  temporis,  it  is  progress- 
ing towards  a  perfection  as  yet  unattained.' 3  This  conclu- 
sion was  no  doubt  inevitable,  seeing  that  each  self  was 
already  defined  as  an  Absolute.4  But  such  a  heroic  multi- 
plication of  deities  appeals  to  me  rather  as  a  reductio  ad  ab- 
surdum  of  Dr.  McTaggart's  doctrine  of  eternal  substances 
than  as  calling  for  further  discussion.  I  doubt  if  individ- 
ualism has  ever  been  carried  further  than  in  this  proposal  to 
have  as  many  universals  as  there  are  particulars. 

But  Pluralism  is  chiefly  associated,  in  recent  discussion, 
with  the  name  of  William  James.  He  has  made  himself 
the  spokesman  of  the  tendency  in  a  special  volume  of 
lectures ;  but  all  through  his  work  we  trace  the  same  reaction 
against  '  monism  '  or  '  rationalism  '  and  its  '  block-universe  '. 
And  with  James,  as  we  have  already  partly  seen,  the 
Pluralism  is  uncompromising;  it  means  a  '  finite  God  '  and 
an  '  unfinished  world  '.  He  agrees,  accordingly,  with  the 
writers  we  have  just  considered  in  distinguishing  sharply 
between  God  and  the  Absolute,  and  he  invokes  the  ordinary 
religious  consciousness  in  support  of  his  position.  "  God  " 
in  the  religious  life  of  ordinary  men  is  the  name  not  of  the 

1  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  34.  2  Ibid.,  p.  35. 

*  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xi,  p.  388  (in  a  review  of  Professor  Howison's 
Limits  of  Evolution). 

4  Descartes  had  already  indicated  the  conclusion:  'If  I  were  myself 
the  author  of  my  being,  anything  else  would  have  been  easy  in  compari- 
son; I  should  have  bestowed  on  myself  every  perfection  of  which  I 
possess  the  idea,  and  I  should  thus  be  God'  (Meditations,  iii). 


394  PLURALISM  LECT. 

whole  of  things,  heaven  forbid,  but  only  of  the  ideal  tendency 
in  things,  believed  in  as  a  superhuman  person  who  calls  us 
to  co-operate  in  his  purposes,  and  who  furthers  ours  if  they 
are  worthy.  He  works  in  an  external  environment,  has 
limits  and  has  enemies.' 1  And  again,  '  Monotheism  itself, 
so  far  as  it  was  religious  and  not  a  scheme  of  class-room 
instruction  for  the  metaphysician,  has  always  viewed  God 
as  but  one  helper,  primus  inter  pares,  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  shapers  of  the  great  world's  fate  '.2 

James's  view  is  thus  the  expression  of  his  intense  con- 
viction of  the  reality  of  the  moral  struggle,  taken  together 
with  the  conception  he  has  formed  of  the  Absolute  as  mak- 
ing that  struggle  unmeaning,  and  as  being  in  fact  '  the 
great  de-realiser  of  the  only  life  we  are  at  home  in  '.3 
Hence  he  transfers  the  moralistic  attitude  to  the  universe  as 
a  whole ;  the  course  of  the  world  appeals  to  him  as  a  struggle 
in  which  the  forces  of  reason  and  goodness  are  at  grips  with 
Chaos  and  old  Night.  One  need  only  recall  the  well-known 
close  of  the  essay  '  Is  Life  worth  Living?  '  :  '  If  this  life  be 
not  a  real  fight  in  which  something  is  eternally  gained  for 
the  universe  by  success,  it  is  no  better  than  a  game  of 
private  theatricals  from  which  one  may  withdraw  at  will. 
But  it  feels  like  a  real  fight — as  if  there  were  something 
really  wild  in  the  universe  which  we,  with  all  our  idealities 
and  faithfulnesses,  are  indeed  to  redeem.  .  .  .  God  himself, 
in  short,  may  draw  vital  strength  and  increase  of  very  being 
from  our  fidelity.  For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  know  what 
the  sweat  and  tragedy  of  this  life  mean,  if  they  mean  any- 
thing short  of  this.'  *  Hence  he  offers  us  as  a  philosophical 
and  religious  creed  the  doctrine  of  '  meliorism  '  or  '  melior- 
istic  theism ',  as  a  mean  '  between  the  two  extremes  of 
crude  Naturalism  on  the  one  hand  and  transcendental 
Absolutism  on  the  other ' ;  between  pessimism  and  an  op- 

1A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  124.  *  Pragmatism,  p.  298. 

*A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  49.  *  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  6l. 


xx         JAMES'S  '  MORALISTIC '  UNIVERSE       395 

timism  '  too  saccharine  ',  '  too  idyllic  '  for  his  taste.  The 
world  we  know  is  a  '  moralistic  and  epic  kind  of  universe ', 
the  hall-mark  of  which  is  progress  through  effort.  Ab- 
solutism alone,  he  admits,  can  give  a  sense  of  security,  an 
assurance,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  eventual,  or  rather  of  the 
eternal,  triumph  of  good.  But  James  finds  himself  '  willing 
to  take  the  universe  to  be  really  dangerous  and  adventurous  ', 
*  a  universe  with  only  a  fighting  chance  of  safety  V  '  The 
ordinary  moralistic  state  of  mind  makes  the  salvation  of  the 
world  conditional  upon  the  success  with  which  each  unit 
does  its  part/  2 

There  is  no  denying  the  stirring  quality  of  Professor 
James's  philosophy  and  the  appeal  it  makes  to  our  active 
nature.  But  can  we  hope  to  find  in  the  characteristics  of 
our  own  practical  activity  a  description  in  ultimate  terms 
of  the  fundamental  nature  of  the  universe?  James  began 
by  appealing  to  religious  usage  in  support  of  his  view  of 
a  struggling  deity  and  a  progressing  world.  But  '  moral- 
istic ',  as  we  find,  is  the  epithet  which  he  tends  on  the 
whole  to  associate  with  his  doctrine  of  Meliorism;  and 
he  admits  that  '  many  persons  would  refuse  to  call  the 
pluralistic  scheme  religious  at  all ',  reserving  that  word  for 
the  monistic  scheme  alone.31  He  speaks  himself  in  this 
sense  of  '  religious  optimism  ',  and  of  taking  sides  for  his 
own  part  with  the  '  more  moralistic  view  ',  and  again  he 
describes  his  position  as  '  moralistic  religion  '.4  Now  it 
has  been  rightly  said  that  a  philosophy  may  be  ultimately 
tested  by  its  ability  '  to  reconcile  the  attitudes  and  postu- 
lates of  morality  and  religion  ' ;  but  it  is  almost  a  philo- 
sophical commonplace  that  the  attitudes  and  postulates  in 
the  two  cases  are  not  the  same.  However  it  may  be  with 
popular  religion,  the  deeper  expressions  of  religious  faith 

1  Pragmatism,  chap.  viii. 

2  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  526. 

*  Pragmatism,  p.  293.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  295-6,  301. 


396  PLURALISM  LECT. 

and  emotion — the  utterances  of  the  saints,  the  religious 
experts — appear  quite  irreconcilable  with  the  pluralistic 
conception  of  a  finite  God,  an  unfinished  world  and  a  dubious 
fight.  In  fact,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  with  Mr.  Bradley, 
that  '  to  make  the  moral  point  of  view  absolute  '  is  to  have 
'  broken  with  every  considerable  religion  V  The  victory 
for  which  morality  fights  is  for  religion  already,  or  rather 
eternally,  won ;  and  it  is  the  assurance  of  this  victory  which 
inspires  the  finite  subject  with  courage  and  confidence  in 
his  individual  struggle.  For  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  the 
apparent  contradiction  between  the  two  standpoints,  on 
which  James  enlarges  in  his  attacks  on  monism,  is  a  prod- 
uct of  philosophical  reflection,  and  does  not  exist  for  the 
religious  man  himself.  On  the  contrary,  as  experience 
abundantly  shows,  the  assurance  of  victory  won  and  recon- 
ciliation achieved  is  the  most  powerful  dynamic  that  can  be 
supplied  to  morality. 

It  may  be,  as  James  often  suggests,  that  there  are  other 
than  merely  logical  considerations  involved  in  the  decision 
between  monism  and  pluralism.  In  an  intellectual  aspect, 
it  is  the  alternative  between  the  idea  of  a  system  and  the 
idea  of  an  aggregate,  and  I  confess  that  I  find  it  impossible 
to  reduce  the  universe  to  a  mere  '  and  '.  Moreover,  if  it 
were  possible  to  think  of  the  universe  as  a  collocation  of 
independent  facts  existing  each  in  its  own  right,  a  sheer 
materialism  would  seem  the  most  natural  form  for  such 
a  view  to  take.  To  conceive  a  Being  of  transcendent 
intelligence  and  goodness  as  no  more  than  one  of  the  facts 
in  the  universe,  seems  to  make  it  harder  than  ever  to  think 
of  other  facts  as  just  happening  to  be  there  along  with  him 
—just  happening  to  exist  also,  and  getting  in  his  way 
actively  or  passively.  Admit  intelligence  or  an  ideal  factor 
at  all,  and  it  seems  impossible  to  conceive  it  otherwise  than 
as  central  and  all-explaining.  It  appears  to  me  trifling  with 
Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  500. 


xx  THE  ABSOLUTE  DREAMER  39; 

one's  intellect  to  make  a  fancy-picture  of  the  universe  as 
a  casual  collection  of  independent  items.  That  anything 
should  exist  at  all,  it  has  been  said,  is  an  unfathomable 
mystery.  Perhaps  on  that  account  it  seems  impossible  to 
think  of  what  exists  otherwise  than  as  a  single  whole,  refer- 
able in  all  its  parts  to  a  single  principle.  And  as  Beauty 
has  been  called  its  own  excuse  for  being,  so  intelligence  or 
Mind,  of  which  beauty  is  one  expression,  may  be  said  in  a 
larger  sense  to  furnish  its  own  raison  d'etre. 

Moreover,  a  Pluralism  like  James's,  put  forward  avowedly 
as  an  assertion  of  the  reality  of  finite  experience,  may  be 
shown  to  be  in  great  part  due  to  the  pre-conceived  idea  of 
the  Absolute  from  which  it  is  the  reaction.  There  is  no 
doubt  much  excuse  for  that  idea  in  the  statements  of 
idealists,  but  it  is  nevertheless  erroneous.  The  Absolute  is 
conceived  by  James  from  beginning  to  end  of  his  polemic 
as  purely  cognitive,  not  the  doer  and  sufferer  in  the  world's 
life,  but  an  eternally  perfect  spectator  of  the  play.  Finite 
beings  are  always  represented,  therefore,  as  the  objects  of 
the  Absolute.  '  To  be,  on  this  scheme  ',  he  says,  '  is,  on  the 
part  of  a  finite  thing,  to  be  an  object  for  the  Absolute,  and 
on  the  part  of  the  Absolute  it  is  to  be  the  thinker  of  that 
assemblage  of  objects.'  The  All-knower  is  one  of  his  most 
frequent  terms  for  the  Absolute.  The  absolute  mind 
'  makes  the  partial  facts  by  thinking  them,  just  as  we  make 
objects  in  a  dream  by  dreaming  them,  or  personages  in 
a  story  by  imagining  them  V  All  through  the  volume, 
A  Pluralistic  Universe,  we  have  this  analogy  of  the  dream 
or  the  story  repeated.  We  hear  of  '  the  cosmic  novel ', 
'  the  tale  which  the  absolute  reader  finds  so  perfect ',  '  the 
spectacle  or  world-romance  offered  to  itself  by  the  absolute  ', 
'  the  sort  of  world  which  the  absolute  was  pleased  to  offer 
to  itself  as  a  spectacle  '.2  And  there  is  a  significant  passage 
in  which,  with  the  truer  view  in  sight,  he  deliberately  rejects 

1A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  36.  2  Ibid.,  pp.  48,  49,  118,  126. 


398  PLURALISM  LECT. 

it,  and  reaffirms  his  own  pre-conceived  idea  of  what  the 
Absolute  must  be.  A  critic  is  supposed  to  suggest  that  we, 
as  finite  minds,  are  '  constituents  '  of  the  Absolute,  that  it 
lives  in  our  life  and  cannot  live  without  us;  but  James 
retorts  that  this  is  '  employing  pluralistic  weapons  and 
thereby  giving  up  the  absolutist  case '.  *  The  Absolute  as 
such  ',  he  reiterates,  '  has  objects,  not  constituents.' l  That 
being  so,  we  have  the  familiar  contrast  between  '  the  static 
timeless  perfect  Absolute  '  and  the  moving  world  of  real 
events,  or  between  '  the  stagnant  felicity  '  of  the  absolute 
novel-reader  and  the  stress  and  strain  (not  to  mention  worse 
things)  endured  by  those  who  are  personages  in  the  plot. 
Or,  stretching  the  metaphor  a  little,  he  asks  why,  if  the 
spectacle  offered  to  itself  by  the  Absolute  is  in  the  Absolute's 
eyes  perfect,  should  the  affair  not  remain  on  just  those  terms, 
without  having  any  finite  spectators  to  come  in  and  add  to 
what  is  perfect  already  their  innumerable  imperfect  manners 
of  seeing  the  same  spectacle.  Why,  in  short,  '  should 
the  Absolute  ever  have  lapsed  from  the  perfection  of  its  own 
integral  experience  of  things  and  refracted  itself  into  all 
our  finite  experiences? ' 

The  metaphor,  as  I  say,  is  halting,  but  the  question  repeats 
the  old  difficulty  which  we  discussed  in  connexion  with  the 
idea  of  creation — the  question  why  there  is  a  finite  world  at 
all,  why  God  or  the  Idea  ever  issued  from  its  antemun- 
dane  self-sufficiency.  And  we  set  the  question  aside  as 
based  on  an  unjustifiable  substantiation  of  God  apart  from 
the  world  of  his  manifestation — a  substantiation  for 
which,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  no  evidence  can  be  forth- 
coming. James's  Absolute  is  just  such  a  self-contained 
Person  who,  apparently  out  of  his  mere  good  pleasure, 
gives  himself  the  spectacle  of  the  cosmic  drama — as  it 
were  pour  se  distraire  ou  pour  passer  le  temps.  It  is  re- 
garded at  any  rate  as  enhancing  his  felicity.  Now  I  am 
1A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  123.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  118-20. 


xx  A  FALSE  IDEA  OF  PERFECTION          399 

far  from  denying  that  chapter  and  verse  might  be  quoted 
from  absolutist  as  well  as  theistic  writers  in  support  of  this 
inhuman  conception :  one  need  not  go  further,  indeed, 
than  Mr.  Bradley's  speculation  about  the  Absolute  enjoy- 
ing the  balance  of  pleasure  distilled,  as  it  were,  from  the 
delights  and  agonies  of  finite  agents,  to  find  some  justifi- 
cation for  James's  way  of  putting  things.  And  we  saw  Mr. 
Bradley  also  at  a  loss  to  know  '  why  the  Absolute  divides 
itself  into  finite  centres  ',  seeing  that  in  its  '  single  and  all- 
absorbing  experience  '  they  entirely  cease  to  exist  as  such. 
This,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  is  only  one  of  two  currents  of 
thought  in  Mr.  Bradley's  philosophical  work;  but  it  was 
the  aloofness — the  in-itselfness,  as  we  might  call  it — of 
his  Absolute,  which  made  the  stronger  impression  on  con- 
temporary thought.  And  just  this  feature  is  shared  by 
the  Absolute  with  the  ordinary  theological  idea  of  God — the 
idea  of  a  God  without  a  universe,  a  pre-existent,  self-cen- 
tred, and  absolutely  self-sufficient  Being,  eternally  realizing 
a  bliss  ineffable  in  the  contemplation  of  his  own  perfec- 
tion. No  wonder  that  there  seems  no  passage  from  such  a 
Being  to  the  imperfect  world  of  our  experience.  But  the 
analysis  we  undertook,  in  two  previous  lectures,  of  the 
ideas  of  creation  and  purpose  applied  to  the  universe  as  a 
whole  led  us  definitely  to  abandon  this  conception  of  the 
divine;  and  I  suggested  that  many  of  our  difficulties  are 
created  for  us  by  the  abstract  idea  of  perfection  with  which 
we  start.  To  reach  any  credible  theory  of  the  relation  of 
God  and  man  we  must,  in  fact,  profoundly  transform  the 
traditional  idea  of  God. 

Orthodox  theism  is  defined  by  Professor  Flint *  as  *  the 
doctrine  that  the  universe  owes  its  existence  and  its  con- 
tinuance in  existence  to  the  reason  and  will  of  a  self-existent 
Being,  who  is  infinitely  powerful,  wise  and  good '.     But 
1  Theism,  p.  18  (eighth  edition). 


400  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

this  world  of  ours,  so  scarred  by  suffering,  so  defaced  by 
wickedness,  so  entangled,  as  it  often  seems,  in  the  meshes  of 
a  non-rational  contingency — how  dare  we  trace  such  a  world 
to  the  reason  and  will  of  a  perfect  Being  as  its  sole  ex- 
plaining cause  ?  Here  Pluralism,  in  one  or  other  of  its  many 
forms,  is  so  obviously,  on  the  surface,  what  James  calls  it, 
the  line  of  least  resistance,  that  one  can  hardly  wonder  at 
the  welcome  it  receives.  God  is  truly  good,  said  Plato,  and 
cannot  be  the  cause  of  any  evil.  But  what  then  of  these 
sinister  and  disconcerting  features?  Here  are  the  ultimate 
difficulties  of  a  theistic  monism.  When  the  problem  is 
forced  upon  us,  Plato  goes  on  to  say,  we  must  find  out  a 
theory  to  save  the  situation.  In  the  case  of  suffering,  for 
example,  we  must  say  that  what  God  did  was  righteous  and 
good,  and  that  the  sufferers  were  chastened  for  their  profit.1 
From  the  days  of  Job  and  his  comforters,  the  devising  of 
such  theodicies — theories  to  save  the  situation — has  been  the 
main  business  of  theology  and  theological  metaphysics. 
Plato  himself,  as  we  incidentally  saw,2  has  his  own  way  of 
escape  from  the  difficulty ;  and  it  consists  essentially  in  sav- 
ing goodness  at  the  expense  of  omnipotence.  '  We  must  be 
prepared  to  deny  that  God  is  the  cause  of  all  things  ',  he 
tells  us  in  the  same  context ;  '  what  is  good  we  must  ascribe 
to  no  other  than  God,  but  we  must  seek  elsewhere,  and  not 
in  him,  the  causes  of  what  is  evil.'  Put  in  metaphysical 
terms,  this  means  that  our  explanation  of  the  course  of  the 
world  must  take  account,  not  only  of  a  divine  intelligence 
and  goodness,  but  also  of  the  clogging  and  thwarting  agency 
of  the  material  in  which  the  divine  Idea  seeks  embodiment. 
But  this  is  to  ascribe  to  matter  an  independent  and  co- 
eternal  reality,  and  thus  to  set  a  principle  of  unreason  along- 
side of  or  over-against  the  purposive  action  of  reason  rep- 
resented by  the  Idea  of  the  Good.  Greek  thought,  on  the 
whole,  represents  the  divine  action  in  this  way,  as  that  of 
1  Republic,  379,380.  2  Cf.  supra,  pp.  305-6. 


xx  THE  GREEK  SOLUTION  401 

an  artificer  limited  by  the  qualities  of  his  material,  and 
consequently  surrenders  the  idea  of  the  universe  as  a  perfect 
and  coherent  whole — the  active  manifestation  of  a  single 
principle.  This  way  of  escape  is  not  open  to  ordinary 
theism,  which  represents  God  as  creator  in  the  fullest  sense ; 
and  it  is  of  course  repudiated  by  Absolutism,  which  is  pre- 
cisely the  assertion  of  a  perfect  and  coherent  whole.  But 
the  empirical  facts  are  so  hard  to  reconcile  with  such  a  thesis, 
that,  in  one  direction  or  another,  the  need  is  felt  to  qualify 
the  idea  of  absolute  or  abstract  omnipotence  by  the  recog- 
nition of  limiting  conditions. 

If  we  turn  once  more  to  Hume,  with  whom  these 
lectures  began,  we  find  the  dualistic  or  Manichaean 
hypothesis  of  two  warring  principles  of  good  and  evil, 
which  is  readily  suggested  by  the  phenomena  of  the  moral 
world,  conclusively  dismissed  as  inconsistent  with  '  the 
uniformity  and  steadiness  of  general  laws  '.  But  Hume 
makes  Cleanthes  grasp  at  the  idea  of  a  finite  deity  as  a  way 
out  of  the  difficulties.  *  Supposing  the  Author  of  Nature  to 
be  finitely  perfect,  though  far  exceeding  mankind,  a  satis- 
factory account  may  then  be  given  of  natural  and  moral 
evil,  and  every  untoward  phenomenon  be  explained  and 
adjusted.  A  less  evil  may  then  be  chosen,  in  order  to  avoid 
a  greater ;  inconveniences  be  submitted  to,  in  order  to  reach 
a  desirable  end;  and,  in  a  word,  benevolence,  regulated  by 
wisdom  and  limited  by  necessity,  may  produce  just  such  a 
world  as  the  present.' x  But  although  Philo  is  invited,  with 
something  like  real  eagerness,  to  give  his  opinion  of  '  this 
new  theory ',  the  suggestion  is  not  developed  in  the  sequel 
of  the  Dialogues,  and  perhaps  Hume  means  us  to  under- 
stand that  he  regards  it  also  as  inconsistent  with  the  power- 
ful impression  of  unity  which  the  universe  produces.  It  is, 
however,  as  is  well  known,  the  position  adopted  by  J.  S.  Mill 
in  his  posthumous  Essays  on  Religion.  Omnipotence  is  dis- 

1  Dialogues,  Part  XL 


402  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

missed  by  Mill  on  account  of  the  impossibility  of  '  reconcil- 
ing infinite  benevolence  and  justice  with  infinite  power  in  the 
Creator  of  such  a  world  as  this '.  The  limitation  of  power 
he  considers  to  be  most  probably  due  to  the  qualities  of  the 
material  with  which  he  had  to  deal ;  for  '  there  is  in  nature 
no  reason  whatever  to  suppose  that  either  matter  or  force 
or  any  of  their  properties  were  made  by  the  Being  who  was 
the  author  of  the  collocations  by  which  the  world  is  adapted 
to  what  we  consider  its  purposes ;  or  that  he  has  power  to 
alter  any  of  those  properties  '.  '  If  [then]  we  suppose  limi- 
tation of  power,  there  is  nothing  to  contradict  the  supposi- 
tion of  perfect  knowledge  and  absolute  wisdom.  .  .  .  But 
nothing  obliges  us  to  suppose  that  either  the  knowledge  or 
the  skill  is  infinite  '.  Similarly  of  the  moral  attributes : 
'  Grant  that  creative  power  was  limited  by  conditions,  the 
nature  and  extent  of  which  are  wholly  unknown  to  us,  and 
the  goodness  and  justice  of  the  Creator  may  be  all  that  the 
most  pious  believe.'  But  if  we  look  simply  at  the  general 
indications  of  the  evidence  available,  we  find  that  the  greater 
part  of  the  adaptation  in  nature  is  not  directed  to  a  moral 
end  at  all,  but  simply  to  keep  the  living  machine  going. 
Still,  a  certain  balance  of  evidence  remains  in  favour  of  a 
'  benevolent  purpose ' ;  '  it  does  appear  that,  granting  the 
existence  of  design,  there  is  a  preponderance  of  evidence 
that  the  Creator  desired  the  pleasure  of  his  creatures '. 
*  But  to  jump  from  this  to  the  inference  that  his  sole  or  chief 
purposes  are  those  of  benevolence,  and  that  the  single  end 
and  aim  of  creation  was  the  happiness  of  his  creatures,  is 
not  only  not  justified  by  any  evidence,  but  is  a  conclusion  in 
opposition  to  such  evidence  as  we  have.  If  the  motive  of 
the  Deity  for  creating  sentient  beings  was  the  happiness  of 
the  beings  he  created,  his  purpose,  in  our  corner  of  the  uni- 
verse at  least,  must  be  pronounced,  taking  past  ages  and  all 
countries  and  races  into  account,  to  have  been  thus  far  an 
ignominious  failure;  and  if  God  had  no  purpose  but  our 


xx  HUME  AND  MILL  403 

happiness  and  that  of  other  living  creatures,  it  is  not  credible 
that  he  would  have  called  them  into  existence  with  the 
prospect  of  being  so  completely  baffled.' 

The  two  points  that  stand  out  in  these  arguments — and 
the  arguments  may  be  taken  as  typical — are,  in  the  first 
place,  the  stress  laid  on  the  idea  of  omnipotence,  and 
secondly,  the  purely  hedonistic  character  of  the  ideal  con- 
templated. The  conception  of  omnipotence  has  been  much 
abused  by  controversialists.  Mere  power  is,  in  any  case, 
the  earliest  and  crudest  predicate  of  the  divine;  God  is 
conceived  as  the  All-powerful  long  before  he  is  thought  of 
as  the  All-good.  The  ethical  attributes  of  justice  and  benevo- 
lence are  not,  in  fact,  transferred  to  the  deity  till  man  him- 
self has  grasped  the  moral  concepts  in  their  purity,  and  risen 
to  the  idea  of  a  cosmic  law  of  right  and  wrong  and  a  will 
untouched  by  envy  or  malevolence.  Moreover,  by  primitive 
thought  power  is  inevitably  conceived  in  terms  of  physical 
force;  and  so  the  power  of  the  god  is  simply  the  irresistible 
force  with  which  he  crushes  opposition  and  condignly 
punishes  the  disobedient.1  His  will,  in  the  absence  of  any 
ethical  content,  is  the  abstraction  of  empty  or  arbitrary  will, 
as  such.  It  is  the  will  of  a  despot.  And  we  must  remember 
how  closely  the  associations  of  oriental  monarchy  have 
wound  themselves  round  the  God-idea.  The  popular  use  of 
*  the  Almighty  ',  as  an  appellation  of  the  Divine  Being,  may 
be  said,  with  some  truth,  to  perpetuate  the  pretensions  of 
these  potentates  and  the  flatteries  of  their  helpless  subjects. 
In  itself,  the  predicate  completely  lacks  the  element  of  value, 
for  it  simply  means  able  to  do  anything.  The  philosophical 
and  theological  discussion  about  omnipotence  has  its  origin 

1  Even  after  the  deity  has  come  to  be  conceived  as  the  executor  of  the 
moral  law,  the  same  idea  of  the  divine  power  is  found  persisting,  e.  g. 
in  Locke's  account  of  '  the  true  ground  of  morality '  as  being  '  the  will 
and  law  of  a  God  who  sees  men  in  the  dark,  has  in  his  hands  rewards 
and  punishments,  and  power  enough  to  call  to  account  the  proudest 
offender  '  (Essay,  I.  3.  6). 


404  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

in  the  same  circle  of  ideas;  and  just  as  Canute's  flatterers 
sought  to  persuade  him  that  he  could  command  the  oncoming 
waves,  so  some  writers,  with  more  zeal  than  knowledge, 
have  thought  to  exalt  the  divine  prerogative  by  representing 
both  truth  and  morality  as  dependent,  in  their  structure,  on 
the  arbitrary  fiat  of  God,  and  by  asserting  his  power  to 
compass  intellectual  and  moral  contradictions.  And,  even 
in  our  own  day,  Dr.  McTaggart  has  thought  it  worth  his 
while  to  devote  some  twenty  pages  to  the  barren  argument 
that  God  is  not  omnipotent,  because  He  cannot  override 
the  laws  of  Identity,  Contradiction,  and  Excluded  Middle, 
and  similar  necessities  of  thought  or  action.1  But  to  affirm 
omnipotence  in  such  a  sense  is  unmeaning,  and  therefore  to 
deny  it  is  unnecessary.  Omnipotence  can  only  mean — as  I 
find  it  expressed  in  a  recent  Catholic  manual — the  power 
'  to  effect  whatever  is  not  intrinsically  impossible  '.  The 
intrinsic  necessities  which  govern  the  possibilities  are  not, 
because  they  are  called  intrinsic,  to  be  regarded  as  a  meta- 
physical fate  behind  God,  or  an  impersonal  system  of 
'  eternal  truths  '  to  which  He  is  forced  to  submit.  The 
foundations  of  the  intelligible  universe  are  the  necessities 
of  the  divine  nature  itself;  and  to  separate  God's  Being,  as 
Power  or  Will,  from  his  Nature  is  the  ultimate  form  of 
that  apotheosis  of  the  empty  Ego  which  we  have  already 
repeatedly  condemned.  This  has  long  been  recognized  by 
responsible  thinkers,  theologians  as  well  as  philosophers,  in 
regard  to  the  fundamental  conditions  of  intellectual  co- 
herence; but  there  is  not  always  the  same  clearness  as 
regards  the  conditions  of  moral  experience,  although  these 
are  as  inexorable  as  any  law  of  thought  and  no  less  founded 
in  the  nature  of  things. 

The  failure  to  realize  the  fundamental  presuppositions  of 
the  moral  life  is  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  sequel  of  Mill's 
argument.     For  he  goes  on  to  comment  on  the  fact  that 
1  Some  Dogmas  of  Religion,  p.  202  et  seq. 


xx      THE  CONCEPTION  OF  OMNIPOTENCE    405 

man,  '  by  the  exercise  of  his  own  energies  for  the  improve- 
ment both  of  himself  and  of  his  outward  circumstances  ',  has 
'  the  power  to  do  for  himself  and  other  creatures  vastly  more 
than  God  had  in  the  first  instance  done  '.  And  his  comment 
is  that  it  is  '  a  very  strange  supposition  to  make  concerning 
the  Deity  ...  to  suppose  that  he  could  not  in  the  first 
instance  create  anything  better  than  a  Bosjesman  or  an 
Andaman  islander,  or  something  still  lower,  and  yet  was  able 
to  endow  the  Bosjesman  or  the  Andaman  islander  with  the 
power  of  raising  himself  into  a  Newton  or  a  Fenelon  '. 
'  We  certainly  do  not  know  the  nature  of  the  barriers  which 
limit  the  divine  omnipotence  ',  he  concludes,  '  but  it  is  a  very 
odd  notion  of  them  that  they  enable  the  Deity  to  confer  on 
an  almost  bestial  creature  the  power  of  producing  by  a  suc- 
cession of  efforts  what  God  himself  had  no  other  means  of 
creating.'  An  honest  controversialist  will  admit  the  dark 
features  of  the  long-drawn-out  process — its  severity  and 
apparent  wastefulness — features  which  sometimes  appear 
to  us  intolerable;  but  as  regards  the  general  principle,  how 
(we  may  reply  to  Mill)  can  we  conceive  a  moral  being  to  be 
created  at  all  except  by  allowing  him  to  make  himself  in 
the  stress  of  circumstance  and  temptation?  And  the  same 
thing  holds  of  the  intellectual  process :  how  but  by  ceaseless 
effort  and  the  conquest  of  difficulties  can  the  thews  of  the 
mind  be  developed  and  strengthened?  Mill's  notion  of  out- 
right creation — everything  done  by  God  '  in  the  first  in- 
stance ' — might  give  us  a  world  of  automata  receiving  their 
daily  doles  of  pleasure,  but  it  could  give  us  neither  the  minds 
nor  the  characters  we  know. 

The  thought  underlying  such  passages  recalls  us,  there- 
fore, to  the  second  feature  which  we  noted  as  common  to  the 
arguments  of  Hume  and  Mill,  the  curious  inability  of  both 
to  see  beyond  a  purely  hedonistic  ideal.  It  is  striking,  when 
one  returns  upon  Hume's  discussion  of  theism,  to  find  how 
completely  the  argument  moves  upon  hedonistic  ground — 


4o6  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

the  '  misery  '  of  man  as  inconsistent  with  the  '  benevolence  ' 
of  God.  'Why  is  there  any  misery  at  all  in  the  world?' 
Hume  asks ;  why  did  God  not  '  render  the  whole  world 
happy',  seeing  that  he  is  supposed  to  have  the  power  to  do 
so?  Or  again:  '  The  course  of  nature  tends  not  to  human 
or  animal  felicity,  therefore  it  is  not  established  for  that 
purpose.  ...  In  what  respect,  then,  do  [God's]  benevo- 
lence and  mercy  resemble  the  benevolence  and  mercy  of 
men  ? ' l  This  is  put  forward  as  clinching  the  argument. 
The  felicity  of  his  creatures  being  apparently  the  only  con- 
ceivable object  of  a  benevolent  creator,  the  existence  of  suf- 
fering makes  it  impossible  to  believe  in  the  benevolence.  And 
this  is  almost  more  strongly  marked  in  the  parallel  discus- 
sion by  Mill.  Evidence  for  '  a  benevolent  purpose  '  is,  for 
Mill  also,  '  evidence  that  the  Creator  desired  the  pleasure  of 
his  creatures  '.  But,  as  we  have  just  seen,  effort,  difficulty, 
hardship,  pain,  seem  to  be  involved  in  any  kind  of  moral 
world  which  we  can  really  conceive,  or  in  any  world  which 
is  really  worth  having;  and  the  end  of  such  a  world  would 
seem  to  be,  by  the  operation  of  such  factors,  '  the  making  of 
souls,'  something  very  different  from  '  the  human  and 
animal  felicity '  which  Hume's  '  bon  Dieu '  is  supposed  to 
aim  at.  Terms  like  pleasure,  felicity,  even  happiness,  keep 
us  at  the  level  of  individual  and  quasi-passive  enjoyment. 
To  be  true  to  the  highest  and  deepest  experiences  of  life,  we 
must  substitute  some  larger  term  like  satisfaction — for  satis- 
faction, of  course,  there  must  be,  even  in  the  completest  sac- 
rifice of  self.  But  though  we  may  possibly  feel  it  not  inap- 
propriate to  speak  of  such  satisfaction  as  happiness,  we 
should  not  dream  of  calling  it  pleasure.  Need  I  do  more 
than  recall  the  well-known  passage  at  the  close  of  Romola  ? 
'  We  can  only  have  the  highest  happiness,  such  as  goes  along 
with  being  a  great  man,  by  having  wide  thoughts  and  much 
feeling  for  the  rest  of  the  world  as  well  as  for  ourselves; 
1  Dialogues,  Parts  X  and  XI. 


xx  A  PURELY  HEDONISTIC  IDEAL          407 

and  this  sort  of  happiness  often  brings  so  much  pain  with  it, 
that  we  can  only  tell  it  from  pain  by  its  being  what  we 
should  choose  before  anything  else,  because  our  souls  see  it 
is  good.'  The  universe  is  not  perfect  in  the  sense  that  it 
contains  nothing  but  undiluted  enjoyment.  We  degrade  it 
to  a  child's  paradise  in  so  conceiving  it.  It  is  not  perfect  in  the 
sense  that  there  is  no  evil  in  it ;  for  it  is  equally  childish  to 
imagine  that  good  can  exist  for  a  finite  creature  except  as 
the  conquest  of  evil.1  Self-contradictory  and  thoughtless 
ideals  blind  us  to  the  nature  of  reality.  We  have  spoken 
much  in  the  earlier  lectures  of  the  reality  of  ideals,  as  the 
presence  of  the  infinite  in  our  finite  lives,  carrying  us  beyond 
the  '  is  '  of  actual  achievement.  But  the  ideals  that  are  true 
and  fruitful  are  struck  out,  or  become  obvious,  in  the  stress 
of  actual  experience,  and  are  only  the  fundamental  structure 
of  reality  coming  to  fuller  expression. 

What,  then,  is  the  conception  of  God  to  which  our  argu- 
ment finally  points?  More  than  once  the  conclusion  has 
been  forced  upon  us  that,  if  we  are  to  reach  any  credible 
theory  of  the  relations  of  God  and  man,  the  traditional  idea 
of  God  must  be  profoundly  transformed.  The  direction 
which  that  transformation  should  take  must  now  be  fairly 
obvious.  The  traditional  idea,  to  a  large  extent  an  inherit- 
ance of  philosophy  from  theology,  may  be  not  unfairly 
described  as  a  fusion  of  the  primitive  monarchical  ideal  with 
Aristotle's  conception  of  the  Eternal  Thinker.  The  two 
conceptions  thus  fused  are,  of  course,  very  different;  for 
power,  which  is  the  main  constituent  of  the  former,  has,  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  no  place  at  all  in  Aristotle's  speculative 
ideal.  But  there  is  common  to  both  the  idea  of  a  self-cen- 

1  It  seems  strange  to  find  Dr.  Rashdall  saying  in  a  recent  essay  on 
'  The  Problem  of  Evil ' :  '  We  see  how  individual  character  is  tried  and 
strengthened  by  the  struggle  with  temptation  and  difficulty,  with  evil 
within  and  evil  without.  But  why  there  should  be  this  conditioning  of 
good  by  evil  we  cannot  say '  (The  Faith  and  the  War,  p.  99).  The  italics 
are  mine. 


4o8  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

tred  life  and  a  consequent  aloofness  from  the  world.  Prim- 
itive man  was  inured  to  an  arbitrary  despotism  which  uses 
power  for  selfish  aggrandizement  and  luxury,  and  sees  in  the 
subject  populations  only  the  instruments  of  its  own  pomp 
and  glory ;  and  the  attitude  of  the  Oriental  ruler  to  his  people 
is  half-unconsciously  transferred  by  the  worshipper  to  his 
god.  And  although  the  relationship  became  purged  in  time 
of  its  baser  features,  and  might  be  characterized,  as  in  the 
case  of  Israel  and  Jahve,  by  a  singular  intimacy  and  depth  of 
feeling,  still  the  conception  of  God  remains  that  of  a  purely 
transcendent  Being,  whose  own  life  is  not  involved  in  the 
fortunes  of  mankind.  '  God  is  good  to  Israel/  and  his 
'  graciousness '  is  often  recorded ;  but  his  graciousness  still 
resembles  the  condescension  of  a  prince  from  his  own 
princely  sphere,  an  act  of  kindness  which  costs  him  nothing. 
And  the  purely  intellectual  character  of  Aristotle's  ideal 
gives  it  the  same  aloofness  we  have  noted  from  the  world's 
life.  It  is  the  ideal  of  the  scholar  and  thinker  who  retires 
into  his  own  thoughts,  and  finds  there  his  highest  happiness. 
The  life  of  God,  Aristotle  says,  '  is  like  the  highest  kind  of 
activity  with  us,  but  while  we  can  maintain  it  but  a  short 
time,  with  him  it  is  eternal ' ;  and  as  all  unimpeded  function 
is  accompanied  by  pleasure,  so,  in  this  unbroken  activity  of 
contemplative  thought,  God  realizes  a  supreme  and  eternal 
blessedness.  Standing  outside  of  the  process,  Aristotle's 
God  is  the  world's  ideal;  he  is  said  to  move  the  world,  as 
the  object  of  the  world's  desire.  But  how  much  is  left  out 
of  such  a  conception !  The  world  strains  after  God  in  love 
and  longing,  but  there  is  no  word  of  that  prior  love  of  God 
to  the  world  which  is  the  condition  of  finite  love  and  aspi- 
ration. '  We  love  him  because  he  first  loved  us.'  In  his 
account  of  the  relation  of  the  world  to  God,  it  has  been  said  : 
'  Aristotle  seems  always  to  move  upward  and  not  down- 
wards. He  seems  always  to  be  showing  that  the  finite  world 
cannot  be  conceived  to  be  complete  and  independent,  and  that 


xx  TRADITIONAL  THEISM  409 

its  existence  therefore  must  be  referred  back  to  God;  but  not 
that  in  the  nature  of  God,  as  he  describes  it,  there  is  any  ne- 
cessity or  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  world.' 1  '  The 
time  had  not  yet  come  ',  says  Erdmann,  '  when  God  would 
be  known  as  the  God  that  took  on  himself  novos,  labour, 
without  which  the  life  of  God  were  one  of  heartless  ease, 
troubled  with  nothing,  while  with  it  alone  he  is  Love  and 
Creator.' 2 

Both  these  writers  point  to  the  deeper  view  of  the  nature 
of  God  contained  in  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. But  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  speculative  truth 
expressed  in  the  central  doctrine  of  the  new  religion  has 
seldom  been  taken  seriously — taken  in  bitter  earnest — either 
in  Christian  theology  or  in  the  metaphysical  idealism  which 
has  grown  up  under  the  same  influences.  The  God  of  pop- 
ular Christian  theology  is  still  the  far-off,  self-involved, 
abstractly  perfect  and  eternally  blessed  God  of  pure  Mono- 
theism, inherited  instincts  combining  with  the  potent  in- 
fluence of  Greek  philosophy  to  stifle  what  was  most 
characteristic  in  the  world-view  of  the  new  faith.  Few 
things  are  more  disheartening  to  the  philosophical  student  of 
religion  than  the  way  in  which  the  implications  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Incarnation  are  evaded  in  popular  theology  by 
dividing  the  functions  of  Deity  between  the  Father  and  the 
Son,  conceived  practically  as  two  distinct  personalities  or 
centres  of  consciousness,  the  Father  perpetuating  the  old 
monarchical  ideal  and  the  incarnation  of  the  Son  being 
limited  to  a  single  historical  individual.2  Grosser  still,  how- 

1  Edward  Caird,  Theology  in  the  Greek  Philosophers,  vol.  ii,  p.  13. 

2  Grundriss  der  Geschichte  der  Philosophic,  section  87. 

*  In  revising  these  lectures  I  have  been  pleased  to  find  strong  support 
for  the  view  here  expressed  in  a  suggestive  paper  by  Dr.  Streeter,  '  The 
Suffering  of  God'  (Hibbert  Journal,  April  1914).  Dr.  Streeter  points 
out  that,  although  the  formula  of  Athanasius  was  embodied  in  the 
creeds,  '  so  far  as  the  imagination  of  the  Church  is  concerned  it  has 
really  been  the  Arian  who  has  triumphed '.  Hebrew  and  Greek  tradi- 
tion combined  in  representing  God  as  transcendent  and  impassible,  and 


4io  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

ever,  is  the  materialism  which  has  succeeded  in  transforming 
the  profound  doctrine  of  the  Spirit,  as  the  ultimate  expres- 
sion of  the  unity  and  communion  of  God  and  man,  into  the 
notion  of  another  distinct  Being,  a  third  centre  of  conscious- 
ness mysteriously  united  with  the  other  two.  The  accidents 
of  language  have  combined  with  the  ingrained  materialism 
of  our  ordinary  thinking  to  make  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
a  supra-rational  mystery  concerning  the  inner  constitution 
of  a  transcendent  Godhead,  instead  of  the  profoundest,  and 
therefore  the  most  intelligible,  attempt  to  express  the  in- 
dwelling of  God  in  man. 

What  was  the  secret  of  Christianity,  the  new  interpreta- 
tion of  life  by  which  it  conquered  the  world  ?  The  answer  is 
in  a  sense  a  commonplace.  It  was  the  lesson  of  self-sacri- 
fice, of  life  for  others,  precisely  through  which,  nevertheless, 
the  truest  and  intensest  realization  of  the  self  was  to  be  at- 
tained— in  the  Pauline  phrase,  dying  to  live,  in  the  words 
of  Jesus,  losing  one's  life  to  find  it.  This  is  the  heavenly 
wisdom,  which  commanded  the  homage  even  of  the  self- 
centred  Goethe : 

Und  so  lang  du  das  nicht  hast, 
Dieses :  Stirb  und  werde, 
Bist  du  nur  ein  triiber  Cast 
Auf  der  dunklen  Erde. 

This  conception  of  the  meaning  of  life,  embodied  in  the 
figure  of  One  who  spoke  of  Himself  as  being  among  men  as 

accordingly  '  the  doctrine  of  the  impassibility  of  God  became  a  postulate 
of  theology.  .  .  .  Men  still  spoke  of  the  love  of  God :  they  only  really 
meant  it  when  they  thought  of  God  the  Son ;  clemency  at  most — a  royal 
prerogative — was  imagined  of  the  Father.  .  .  .  The  Christian  Creed 
acknowledges  but  one  God  and  one  quality  of  Godhead — so  far  Atha- 
nasius  won  his  cause ;  but  the  Christian  imagination  has  been  driven  by 
this  postulate  of  the  impassibility  of  God  to  worship  two  Side  by  side 
sit  throned  in  heaven  God  the  Father,  omnipotent,  unchangeable,  impas- 
sible, and  on  his  right  hand  God  the  Son,  "  passus,  crucifixus,  tnortuus, 
resurreclus".  What  is  this  but  Arianism,  routed  in  the  field  of  intellec- 
tual definition,  triumphing  in  the  more  important  sphere  of  the  imagi- 
native presentation  of  the  object  of  the  belief?' 


xx  THE  SECRET  OF  CHRISTIANITY          411 

one  that  serveth,  this  was  the  victory  which  overcame  the 
world.  It  is  the  final  abandonment  of  the  hedonistic  ideal, 
through  the  recognition  of  the  inherent  emptiness  of  the 
self-centred  life.  The  whole  standard  of  judgement  upon 
life  and  the  purpose  of  the  world  is  accordingly  changed. 
And  here  the  bearing  of  the  change  upon  our  argument 
becomes  apparent. 

For  if  this  is  the  deepest  insight  into  human  life,  must  we 
not  also  recognize  it  as  the  open  secret  of  the  universe? 
That  is  the  conclusion  to  which  we  have  been  led  up  more 
than  once  already  in  the  course  of  these  lectures :  no  God, 
or  Absolute,  existing  in  solitary  bliss  and  perfection,  but  a 
God  who  lives  in  the  perpetual  giving  of  himself,  who 
shares  the  life  of  his  finite  creatures,  bearing  in  and  with 
them  the  whole  burden  of  their  finitude,  their  sinful  wander- 
ings and  sorrows,  and  the  suffering  without  which  they  can- 
not be  made  perfect.  It  is  the  fundamental  structure  of 
reality  which  we  are  seeking  to  determine.  For  that  surely 
is  the  meaning  of  all  discussion  as  to  the  being  and  nature 
of  God.  In  this  ultimate  instance,  therefore,  we  cannot 
expect  to  gain  an  insight  into  that  structure  by  passing 
altogether  from  the  process  of  the  finite  life,  treating  it 
simply  as  an  illusion,  and  defining  Reality,  in  contrast  with 
it,  as  the  perpetual  undimmed  enjoyment  of  a  static  per- 
fection. To  do  so  would  be  to  abandon  the  principle  which 
has  guided  us  throughout.  We  must  interpret  the  divine 
on  the  analogy  of  what  we  feel  to  be  profoundest  in  our 
own  experience.  And  if  so,  the  omnipotence  of  God  will 
mean  neither  the  tawdry  trappings  of  regal  pomp  nor  the 
irresistible  might  of  a  physical  force.  The  divine  om- 
nipotence consists  in  the  all-compelling  power  of  good- 
ness and  love  to  enlighten  the  grossest  darkness  and 
to  melt  the  hardest  heart.  '  We  needs  must  love  the 
highest  when  we  see  it.'  It  is  of  the  essence  of  the 
divine  prerogative  to  seek  no  other  means  of  triumph — 


4i2  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

as,  indeed,  a  real  triumph  is  possible  on  no  other  terms.1 
And  thus,  for  a  metaphysic  which  has  emancipated  itself 
from  physical  categories,  the  ultimate  conception  of  God  is 
not  that  of  a  pre-existent  Creator  but,  as  it  is  for  religion, 
that  of  the  eternal  Redeemer  of  the  world.  This  perpetual 
process  is  the  very  life  of  God,  in  which,  besides  the  effort 
and  the  pain,  He  tastes,  we  must  believe,  the  joy  of  victory 
won. 

But  although,  from  the  divine  point  of  view,  the  process 
must  be  thus  envisaged  in  its  completeness  as  an  eternal  deed, 
that  is  not  to  be  taken  as  implying  that  we  have  to  do,  as 
James  suggests,  with  a  spectacular  performance,  in  which 
the  conflict  is  merely  a  make-believe  and  the  issue  a  fore- 
gone conclusion.  There  is  a  well-known  passage  of  Hegel 
which  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  lend  colour  to  such  a  sug- 
gestion. '  Within  the  range  of  the  finite  ',  he  says,  '  we  can 
never  see  or  experience  that  the  End  has  been  really  secured. 
The  consummation  of  the  infinite  End,  therefore,  consists 
merely  in  removing  the  illusion  which  makes  it  seem  yet  un- 
accomplished. The  Good,  the  absolutely  Good,  is  eternally 
accomplishing  itself  in  the  world,  and  the  result  is  that  it 
needs  not  wait  upon  us,  but  is  already  by  implication,  as  well 
as  in  full  actuality,  accomplished.  This  is  the  illusion  under 
which  we  live.  It  alone  supplies  at  the  same  time  the  actual- 
izing force  on  which  the  interest  in  the  world  depends.  In 
the  course  of  its  process,  the  Idea  creates  that  illusion  by  set- 
ting an  antithesis  to  confront  itself,  and  its  action  consists 
in  getting  rid  of  the  illusion  which  it  has  created.' z  It  will 
be  noted  that  Hegel  represents  this  illusion  as  the  beneficent 
source  of  our  interest  in  the  world  and  its  doings.  But  can 
we  hope  to  preserve  that  interest  if  we  admit  to  ourselves — 

1  This  was  finely  brought  out  in  the  passage  quoted  from  Professor 
Howison,  supra,  p.  319. 

1  Encyclopaedia,  section  212,  Zusatz  (Wallace's  translation,  p.  352). 
Tauschung  is  the  word  used  and  four  times  repeated,  meaning  literally 
a  '  deception '  practised  by  the  Idea  upon  the  finite  subject 


xx        A  PASSAGE  OF  HEGEL  CRITICIZED      413 

even  though  it  be  only  in  our  speculative  moments — that  it 
is  all  a  cleverly  arranged  deception?  The  view,  as  Hegel 
here  presents  it,  seems  to  me,  I  confess,  to  paralyse  our 
energies  at  their  source;  if  the  antagonisms  of  the  moral  life 
are  not  real,  then  we  have  no  standard  of  reality  left.  But 
the  impression  produced  by  Hegel's  passage  is  due,  in  part 
at  least,  to  the  intrusion  of  the  time-perspective.  For  if  it 
is  false  to  place  the  divine  consummation  in  the  future  as 
'  one  far-off  divine  event ',  it  is  still  more  fundamentally 
false,  in  a  practical  regard,  to  represent  it  as  a  finished  fact 
in  the  past.  All  the  tenses  of  time  are  required  to  body 
forth  the  eternal,  and  if  we  use  them  all  frankly,  we  reach 
(we  need  not  doubt)  a  practical  truth.  But  if  we  attempt 
a  more  speculative  statement,  the  statement  must  be  in 
terms  of  the  present.  The  universe  is  in  no  sense  a  finished 
fact;  it  is  an  act,  a  continuous  life  or  process  which  (to 
speak  in  terms  of  time)  is  perpetually  being  accomplished.1 
Professor  Bosanquet  has  well  said  of  the  finite  self  that  '  a 
true  self  is  something  to  be  made  and  won,  to  be  held 
together  with  pains  and  labour,  not  something  given  to  be 
enjoyed  '.2  The  same  must  be  true  of  the  Absolute  as  the 
perpetual  reconstitution  and  victorious  self-maintenance  of 
the  spiritual  whole.  But  if  so,  nothing  could  be  more  con- 
trary to  the  true  spirit  of  the  situation  than  to  speak  of  the 
end  as  already  accomplished  in  the  sense  that  '  it  needs  not 
wait  upon  us  ' ;  for  it  is  in  and  through  finite  individuals  that 
the  divine  triumph  is  worked  out,  and  each  of  our  actions 
and  choices  is  therefore  integral  to  the  total  result.  Such  a 
view  contains,  accordingly,  all  the  strenuousness,  the  sense 
of  uttermost  reality  in  the  struggle,  on  which  James  rightly 
insists. 

1  Cf.  Lecture  XIX,  supra,  pp.  369-70. 

*  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  338.     Cf.  the  words  which  Goethe  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  Faust  a  few  moments  before  his  death: 
Nur  der  verdient  die  Freiheit  wie  das  Leben, 
Der  taglich  sie  erobern  muss. 


4H  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

In  much  the  same  way  as  James  tends  to  treat  Absolutism 
as  a  creed  for  '  the  tender-minded ',  Nietzsche  brands 
Idealism  in  all  its  varieties  as  a  '  flight  from  reality  ',  a 
species  of  '  cowardice  '  which  refuses  at  any  price  to  see  how 
reality  is  actually  constituted.  But  whatever  grounds  there 
may  be  for  this  suggestion  in  the  facile  optimism  of  some 
idealistic  writers,  such  a  charge  can  hardly  be  brought 
against  the  view  of  God  and  the  world  which  has  been  in- 
dicated in  the  preceding  pages.  There  are  features  of  the 
world-process,  I  have  admitted,  so  horrible  that  we  often  feel 
them  to  be  frankly  intolerable.  The  agonies  of  helpless  suf- 
fering from  age  to  age  and  the  depths  of  infamy  and  cruelty 
which  the  human  record  discloses — how  are  facts  like  these 
to  be  reconciled  with  the  controlling  presence  of  a  principle 
of  reason  and  goodness?  Certainly  if  we  attempt  the  rec- 
onciliation while  clinging  to  the  old  idea  of  an  omnipotent 
and  impassible  Creator  or  an  Absolute  in  the  role  of  spec- 
tator, we  shall  soon  find  ourselves  exclaiming  with  James 
that  '  a  God  who  can  relish  such  superfluities  of  horror  is 
no  God  for  human  beings  to  appeal  to  V  But  the  whole 
analogy  of  a  superhuman  Person  and  a  carefully  adjusted 
scheme  is  strangely  inadequate  to  the  nature  of  the  tremen- 
dous Fact  we  would  explain.  Creation,  if  the  term  is  to  be 
used  in  philosophy,  must  be  taken,  we  found  in  a  previous 
lecture,  as  expressing  the  essential  nature  of  the  divine 
life;  the  revelation  of  the  infinite  in  the  finite  is  the  eternal 
fact  of  the  universe.  But  the  finite  world,  as  centred  in 
finite  spirits,  I  have  also  contended,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as 
a  mere  appearance,  existing  only  from  the  finite  point  of 
view;  it  is  metaphysically  real,  as  founded  in  the  nature  of 
God  himself.  The  usefulness  of  the  term  creation  consists, 
therefore,  in  the  emphasis  it  lays  on  the  distinction  implied, 
as  being  more  than  can  be  rendered  in  terms  of  substance 
and  mode.  And  one  may  recall  in  this  connexion  a  phrase 
1  Pragmatism,  p.  143. 


xx         DOES  A  WORLD  IMPLY  CASUALTY?       415 

of  Hegel's,  riddled  by  criticism,  in  which  he  speaks  of  the 
Idea  *  freely  letting  itself  go  '  into  the  externality  of  space 
and  time  and  so  appearing  to  itself  as  Nature.  Without 
stirring  the  ashes  of  ancient  controversies,  it  is  perhaps  not 
altogether  fanciful  to  read  into  the  curious  phrase  some  rec- 
ognition of  the  fact  that  the  '  otherness  '  of  the  finite  is  not 
a  logical  transparency,  but  brings  with  it  a  real  difference 
and  important  consequences. 

The  existence  of  a  finite  world  at  all  seems,  in  short,  to 
involve  the  clash  of  individualities  which  tend  to  go  their 
own  way  and  seek  their  own  ends.  And  if  this  involves 
an  element  of  contingency  in  the  world  of  moral  action,  the 
same  would  seem  to  be  true  of  the  world  of  nature  which 
is  the  theatre  of  that  action.  Nature,  we  argued  at  an 
earlier  stage,  may  be  regarded,  on  the  large  scale  of  history, 
as  the  instrument  of  man's  moral  and  intellectual  education; 
but  that  does  not  mean  that  we  are  bound  to  take  each  of 
nature's  happenings  as  the  exponent  of  a  particular  moral 
purpose.  The  religious  man  will,  no  doubt,  seek  to  accept 
whatever  happens  to  him  as  from  the  hand  of  God,  and 
by  doing  so  he  will  make  this  account  of  the  occurrence 
true,  because  he  thereby  transmutes  the  event  into  an  instru- 
ment of  spiritual  growth.  But  the  spirit  in  which  he  meets 
the  experience  does  not,  I  think,  imply  that  he  traces  the 
event,  as  a  natural  occurrence,  to  the  operation  of  a  par- 
ticular providence.  And  it  is  needless  to  say  that  such  is 
not  the  broad  impression  we  derive  from  the  facts  of  life. 
'  One  shall  be  taken  and  another  left.'  Contingency  is 
written  across  the  face  of  nature — not  in  the  sense  that  what 
happens  is  not  determined  by  natural  law,  but  in  the  sense 
that  it  appears  to  be  only  so  determined,  and  cannot,  in  its 
detail,  be  brought  within  the  scope  of  any  rational  or  benef- 
icent purpose.  Contingency,  casualty,  or  accident  in  this 
sense  was  frankly  recognized  by  Plato  and  Aristotle,  the  great 
teleologists  of  the  ancient  world.  But  whereas  they  treat  it 


416  EVIL  AND  SUFFERING  LECT. 

merely  as  hindrance  and  defect,  does  not  further  reflection 
show  that  just  such  a  world  is  better  fitted  to  be  a  nurse  of 
what  is  greatest  in  human  character  than  any  carefully 
adjusted  scheme  of  moral  discipline?  Nature  is  more  than 
a  training-school  of  the  moral  virtues  in  the  specific  sense; 
it  is  an  element,  savage  and  dangerous,  into  which  the  human 
being  is  thrown  to  show  what  stuff  he  is  made  of — an 
element  testing  with  merciless  severity  his  powers  of  courage 
and  endurance,  but  drawing  from  him  thereby  the  utmost 
of  which  he  is  capable.  Life  for  the  individual  in  such 
a  medium  is  a  series  of  opportunities,  but  the  use  he  makes 
of  them  depends  on  himself. 

It  comes  upon  us  at  first  with  something  of  a  shock  to 
find  Professor  Bosanquet  referring  to  this  process  of  the 
moulding  of  souls  as  '  the  chapter  of  accidents ' ; 1  yet 
that  common  phrase  correctly  enough  describes  the  aspect 
of  contingency  in  detail  which  seems  to  belong  to  any 
finite  world  that  is  more  than  an  illusion.  The  contingence 
is,  in  the  deepest  view,  contributory  to — or  rather  an 
essential  condition  of — the  perfection  of  the  whole,  but  it 
wears  the  appearance  of  a  foreign  element  in  which,  and  in 
spite  of  which,  the  divine  purpose  is  worked  out;  and  it 
carries  with  it  dangerous  possibilities — extremities  of 
wickedness  and  of  suffering,  which  it  would  be  hard  indeed 
to  justify,  if  we  considered  them  as  specific  parts  of  a  delib- 
erate plan.  It  is  undoubtedly  a  source  of  '  the  arduousness 
of  reality  ',  but  in  the  arduousness  is  rooted  most  of  the 
grandeur  of  the  world.  And  if  we  complain  of  the  severity 
of  the  process,  we  constantly  forget,  as  Professor  Bosanquet 
urges,  that  '  if  we  had  our  choice  of  pains,  we  should  rule 
out  our  own  greatest  opportunities  '.2  The  sequel  may  show 
the  experience  in  question  as  the  very  gate  through 

1  e.  g.  Value  and  Destiny,  pp.  225,  228,  but  the  idea  runs  through  his 
two  volumes. 
1  Ibid.,  p.  181. 


xx  THE  OMNIPOTENCE  OF  LOVE  417 

which  we  passed  to  a  nobler  life.     And  every  day  brings  us 
instances  of 


Sorrow  that  is  not  sorrow  but  delight, 
And  miserable  love  that  is  not  pain 
To  hear  of,  for  the  glory  that  redounds 
Therefrom  to  human  kind  and  what  we  are. 

No  deeper  foundation  of  Idealism  can  be  laid  than  the 
perception  which  Professor  Royce  makes  the  text  of  his 
latest  book — the  perception  of  the  spirit's  power  to  trans- 
form the  very  meaning  of  the  past  and  to  transmute  every 
loss  into  a  gain,  '  finding  even  in  the  worst  of  tragedies  the 
means  of  an  otherwise  impossible  triumph,'  '  a  triumph 
which  but  for  that  wrong  or  treason  had  never  been.  This 
is  the  real  omnipotence  of  atoning  love,  unweariedly  creating 
good  out  of  evil;  and  it  is  no  far-off  theological  mystery 
but,  God  be  thanked,  the  very  texture  of  our  human 
experience. 

1  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  vol.  i,  p.  310. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

NOTE  A.    PAN-PSYCHISM 

Mr.  C.  A.  Richardson,  an  able  pupil  of  Professor  Ward's, 
has  challenged  my  criticisms  of  Pan-psychism  in  an  article 
in  Mind  for  January  1919,  since  reprinted  in  his  volume, 
Spiritual  Pluralism  and  Recent  Philosophy.  He  seeks  to  in- 
validate the  objection  (urged  also  by  Professor  Bosanquet) 
that  internality  is  impossible  without  externality,  and  that  it 
is  in  fact  as  externalities  and  not  as  selves  that  material 
objects  function  in  our  experience,  by  drawing  a  distinction 
between  the  immediate  data  of  perception  and  the  existent 
entities  of  which  these  '  sense-data '  are  the  '  appearance '  or 
'  presentation  '.  '  For  pluralism  the  object  of  experience  does 
not  consist  of  other  subjects  but  of  the  appearance  of  those 
other  subjects  to  the  individual  subject  considered.'  '  An 
existent  entity  cannot  be  an  object  of  knowledge,'  and  'the 
presented  object  of  experience  is  not  itself  to  be  classed  as  an 
existent  entity,  though  it  has  being  in  the  sense  that  it  is  there.' 
This  no  doubt  correctly  represents  the  theory  and  also  the 
motives  which  underly  it,  but  besides  apparently  reducing  the 
objects  of  nature,  as  we  apprehend  them,  to  subjective  pro- 
cesses in  the  mind  of  the  percipient,  it  fails  to  deal  with  the 
unnaturalness  of  the  hypothesis,  of  which  I  complained  in  the 
text.  Normally  any  phenomenon  or  appearance  expresses  the 
nature  of  the  existent  whose  appearance  it  is ;  but,  in  the  whole 
realm  of  the  inorganic  at  any  rate,  it  cannot  be  contended  that 
there  is  anything  to  suggest  the  soul-centres  which  Pan- 
psychism  places  behind  every  natural  occurrence.  They  seem 
to  obscure  the  nature  of  the  facts  rather  than  to  render  them 
more  intelligible. "Hence  the  theory  (I  am  constrained  to  re- 
peat) though  capable  of  intellectual  statement,  seems  to  me 
in  its  universal  application,  to  be  without  vital  meaning  and, 
in  that  sense,  to  lack  credibility. 

As  regards  the  point  which  I  specially  criticised,  the  at- 

419 


420  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

tempt  to  treat  physical  laws  as  consolidated  habits,  themselves 
the  result  of  evolution,  Mr.  Richardson  concedes  much  of  what 
I  contended  for,  when  he  admits  that  '  action  is  impossible 
without  environment '  and  that  '  the  monads  must  always  have 
had  some  nature.'  Hence  he  presents  the  theory  in  a  distinctly 
limited  form :  '  By  the  evolution  of  natural  laws,  the  pluralist 
simply  means  that  the  laws  of  nature  did  not  always  exist  in 
their  present  relatively  fixed  form.'  I  quite  agree  with  him 
that  '  laws  are  not,  as  it  were,  imposed  upon  things  from  with- 
out, but  are  merely  descriptions  of  the  way  in  which  things 
behave.'  But  no  such  independent  substantiation  of  laws  was 
involved  in  my  argument.  What  I  sought  to  press  home  was 
that  habits  of  action  cannot  be  acquired  except  in  the  face  of 
a  definite  system  of  conditions  to  which  the  creature  reacts,  and 
that  the  resulting  response  is  determined  by  the  joint  nature 
of  the  interacting  factors.  But  Mr.  Peirce's  theory  appears  to 
build  upon  a  spontaneity  which  ignores  '  natures '  altogether. 
(The  italics  in  my  quotations  from  Spiritual  Pluralism  are  Mr. 
Richardson's  own.) 


NOTE  B  (p.  190) 

A  personal  disclaimer  on  Professor  Taylor's  part  and  a 
more  careful  examination  of  parallel  passages  in  Mr.  Brad- 
ley's  work  have  convinced  me  that  the  statements  quoted  are 
not  intended  in  a  strictly  Berkeleian  sense.  They  are  prob- 
ably meant  to  emphasise  the  meaninglessness  of  a  world 
entirely  unrelated  to  sentience,  which  is  substantially  the  argu- 
ment of  my  sixth  lecture.  But  the  form  of  expression  is 
certainly  misleading. 


NOTE  C.     IDEALISM  AND  MENTALISM 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  remind  the  reader  that  the  argument 
of  Lecture  X  is  to  be  taken  in  connection  with  the  strong 
emphasis  laid  throughout  the  volume  on  the  meaninglessness, 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  421 

the  nonsensicality  one  might  say,  of  a  world  from  which  feel- 
ing and  appreciation  should  be  absent,  and  in  connection  also 
with  the  recurring  polemic  against  the  idea  of  the  thing-in- 
itself  apart  from  knowledge.  Just  because  the  centrality  of 
intelligence,  as  the  sole  principle  of  explanation  and  unity,  had 
been  so  insistently  dwelt  upon  throughout,  and  most  recently 
in  the  summary  of  the  argument  in  the  preceding  lecture, 
I  have  been  perhaps  less  careful  of  my  phraseology  in  this 
particular  discussion  than  I  ought  to  have  been.  Noth- 
ing could  be  further  from  my  intention  than  to  treat  the 
material  world  as  a  set  of  self -existent  facts,  which  just 
happen  to  be  there,  and  which  the  conscious  mind — another 
empirical  fact — just  stumbles  upon  in  the  course  of  its  life- 
adventure.  I  do  not  hold  the  realistic  creed  as  formulated 
by  a  recent  disciple,  that  the  universe  is  *  a  box  containing 
many  and  different  contents.'  I  am  indebted,  therefore,  to 
Professor  Bosanquet  for  calling  my  attention  (in  his  review 
of  my  book  in  Mind)  to  a  phrase  which,  taken  by  itself,  might 
seem  to  re-introduce  the  unrelated  dualism  against  which  I 
had  contended,  by  speaking  of  the  existence  of  things  '  entirely 
apart  from  their  being  known.'  The  phrase  occurred  in  a 
context  which  dealt  primarily  with  the  knowledge  of  this  or 
that  individual,  but  I  recognise  its  undesirability,  and  words 
are  now  substituted  (on  p.  192)  which  limit  my  meaning  and 
make  the  reference  to  Berkeley's  instance  clear.  I  have  also 
modified  the  phraseology  of  a  sentence  on  p.  200. 

The  general  purpose  of  the  Lecture,  I  may  add,  was  to 
disentangle  the  philosophical  doctrine  of  Idealism  from  the 
epistemological  heresy  of  Subjective  Idealism  or  Mentalism, 
and,  further,  to  show  that  philosophical  arguments  based  on 
cognition  alone  can  yield  us  only  a  formal  or  abstract  unity. 
These  two  issues  are  not  quite  the  same,  although  Green's 
view  of  nature  as  a  system  of  thought-relations  formed  a 
natural  transition  from  the  one  to  the  other.  Perhaps  it 
might  have  conduced  to  greater  clearness,  had  the  epistemo- 
logical debate  between  Mentalism  and  Realism  been  more  fully 
developed  in  terms  of  contemporary  controversy  and  the  criti- 
cism of  Green  reserved  for  another  context,  when  more 


422  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

justice  might  have  been  done  to  the  various  aspects  of  his 
system.  Historically  Green's  philosophy  was  an  avowed 
polemic  against  Mentalism  of  the  Berkeleian  or  Humian  type. 
But  his  Kantian  dualism  between  thought  and  sense  and  his 
hesitating  treatment  of  sensation  seem  to  lead  him  back  to  a 
species  of  subjectivism. 

In  an  article  which  I  wrote  in  reply  to  certain  criticisms 
(Mind,  January  1919),  the  epistemological  argument  is  a  little 
more  fully  stated,  and  it  may  be  useful  to  incorporate  a  few 
paragraphs  here.  They  may  help  to  clear  up  the  sense  in 
which  the  independence  of  the  object  is  asserted  and  the 
grounds  on  which  the  assertion  is  made.  Speaking  of  the 
Berkeley-Mill-Bain  analysis  of  matter  into  forms  of  conscious 
process  or  actual  and  possible  experience,  which  one  of  my 
critics  appeared  to  accept,  I  said:  There  is  nothing  which  I 
believe  to  be  epistemologically  more  unsound  than  this  iden- 
tification of  the  knower's  knowledge  or  experience  with  the 
reality  of  the  object  he  knows.  Knowledge,  experience,  con- 
sciousness— all  such  terms — contain  in  their  very  essence  a 
reference  beyond  the  subjective  process  to  a  reality  known  or 
experienced  in  that  process.  They  all  point  beyond  them- 
selves to  an  object  whose  reality  is  not  constituted  by  the 
knowing  but  presupposed  by  it,  and  in  that  sense  independent 
of  it.  This  is,  I  hold,  the  irreducible  truth  in  Realism,  and  it 
will  be  found  that  the  very  language  used  by  the  Mentalists 
often  betrays  the  confusion  on  which  their  position  rests. 
When,  for  example,  Dean  Rashdall  says  '  Matter,  as  we  know 
it,  can  always  be  analysed  away  into  a  form  of  conscious  ex- 
perience,' a  critic  might  easily  retort  that  the  proposition  is  in 
effect  an  identical  one,  for  '  matter,  as  we  know  it,'  is  taken 
in  it  as  equivalent  to  '  our  knowledge  of  matter '.  Or,  again, 
we  are  told,  that  if  we  think  of  matter  in  the  sense  of  the 
Idealist,  we  must  think  of  it  as  '  existing  only  in  and  for 
Mind '.  But  there  is,  or  may  be,  a  great  difference  between 
'  in  '  and  '  for  '.  An  object,  when  sensed  or  in  any  way  experi- 
enced, may  intelligibly  be  said  to  exist  for  the  mind  in  ques- 
tion or  to  be  present  to  it ;  but  it  is  contrary  to  philosophical 
and  scientific  analysis  no  less  than  to  common  sense  to  de- 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  423 

scribe  the  object  as  in  the  mind.  Such  a  form  of  expression 
really  depends  upon  the  unfounded  (and,  let  us  hope,  now  ex- 
ploded) dogma  that  we  cannot  know  a  thing  without  actually 
being  the  thing,  or  unless  the  thing  migrates  over  into  us  and 
becomes  part  of  our  own  being.  From  this  follows,  in  the 
first  instance,  the  doctrine  of  Representative  Perception,  which 
in  turn  gives  place  to  Subjective  Idealism.  But,  if  we  refuse 
to  yield  to  this  unfounded  prejudice  at  the  outset,  we  shall  not 
be  tempted  to  sacrifice  the  reality  of  the  object  by  reducing  it 
to  a  process  in  the  knowing  mind.  We  shall  be  able  to  recog- 
nise that  the  reality  of  the  fact  known  is  everywhere  the 
precondition  of  the  fact  of  our  knowing  it  and  not  vice  versa. 
This  is  so  obvious  in  our  own  case  that  the  second  word  of 
the  Mentalist  is  always  the  retractation  of  his  first.  He  hastens 
to  assure  us  that  the  identification  of  the  object  with  the  mental 
experience  is  of  course  not  true  in  the  case  of  any  finite  mind 
whose  experiences  come  and  go,  have  a  beginning  and  an 
end.  To  make  the  theorem  true  we  have  to  imagine  the  all- 
sustaining  experience  of  a  divine  or  cosmic  consciousness. 
But  if  this  transference  of  the  issue  appears  at  first  sight  to 
make  the  argument  more  plausible,  that  is  only,  as  I  have 
argued,  because  in  our  statement  of  the  new  case  we  have 
insensibly  altered  the  conditions.  Under  one  set  of  phrases 
or  another,  we  attribute  to  such  a  cosmic  consciousness  a 
productive  or  creative  activity  which  confers  upon  the  objects 
of  its  thought  just  that  stability  and  relative  independence 
which  we  recognise  in  the  object  of  our  own  knowledge,  and  in 
virtue  of  which  these  cosmic  objects,  as  I  may  call  them,  are 
supposed  to  be  capable  of  becoming  common  objects  to  any 
number  of  finite  minds.  But,  even  so,  the  theory  immediately 
breaks  down  on  closer  examination ;  for,  if  we  give  it  the  mean- 
ing which  makes  it  persuasive,  it  implies,  in  the  case  of  any  so- 
called  object,  the  identity,  or  at  least  the  complete  resemblance, 
of  the  divine  and  the  human  mode  of  experience.  But  how 
can  we  identify  our  own  sense-experience  of  the  external  world 
with  the  mode  in  which  Nature  enters  into  a  divine  experience  ? 
Hence  the  theory  tends  to  change  its  form.  '  The  object  and 
the  sensation,'  are  no  longer  taken,  in  Berkeley's  phrase,  as  '  the 


424  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

same  thing ' ;  the  sense-experience  of  the  finite  consciousness 
is  represented  as  the  immediate  result  of  the  divine  Will, 
and  the  reality  and  independence  of  the  object  is  now  placed 
in  the  permanent  exciting  cause  of  the  experience.  But 
with  this  acknowledgment  of  an  extra-mental  reality,  we 
have  abandoned  the  principle  on  which  Mentalism  stands. 
The  weakness  of  the  new  version  is,  moreover,  that  the 
reference  to  bare  Will  does  not  explain  the  particularity — 
the  nature — of  the  occurrences.  But,  seeing  that  what  is  willed 
is  supposed  to  be  consciously  willed,  the  character  of  the  events 
and  what  may  be  called  the  scheme  of  operations  as  a  whole 
must  be  somehow  present  to  the  divine  Mind ;  and  that  raises 
once  more  the  question  of  '  how '.  When  Berkeley  grapples 
intermittently  with  this  question  in  Siris,  his  reflections  seem 
to  be  leading  him  to  a  view  not  far  removed  from  Platonic 
Realism. 

It  was  accordingly  the  epistemological  falsity,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  of  the  mentalistic  argument  in  its  original  form  and  the 
ambiguity  of  all  the  attempts  to  re-state  it  in  cosmic  terms — 
as  well  as  the  exiguous  nature  of  the  result  attainable  by  such 
a  mode  of  reasoning,  even  if  its  validity  were  granted — that 
made  me  anxious  to  keep  my  own  argument  free  from  such 
entangling  associations.  But  I  did  not  on  that  account  intend 
for  a  moment  to  assert  the  metaphysical  self -existence,  as  I 
may  term  it,  of  material  things.  Modern  Realists  probably 
tend  as  a  rule  to  do  so,  but  the  idea  of  the  universe  as  a 
mere  aggregate  of  independent  existences,  whether  these  exist- 
ences be  minds  or  things,  is  to  me  ultimately  unthinkable ;  and, 
of  course,  the  materialistic  form  of  such  an  idea — as  if  the 
universe  consisted  of  '  bits  of  unrelated  stuff  lying  about ' — 
is  the  precise  antithesis  of  everything  I  have  ever  taught.  '  Es- 
sential relatedness '  is  the  conception  which  I  oppose  to  the 
figment  of  the  unrelated  (and  therefore  ultimately  unknow- 
able) thing  in  itself,  on  which  I  have  poured  unmitigated 
scorn.  Things  exist  as  they  are  known  by  mind,  and  they  may 
be  said  to  exist  in  order  to  be  so  known  and  appreciated.  In 
this  sense  all  things  exist  for  mind,  but  my  point  is  that  they  do 
exist ;  a  thing  is  not  itself  '  a  form  of  conscious  experience,'  a 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  425 

phase,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  being  of  the  experiencing  mind. 
Finite  minds  require  an  environment  by  which  they  are  shaped 
and  from  which  they  receive  their  content,  and  it  is  ultimately 
nonsensical  to  seek  to  represent  the  environment  as  a  state  or 
process  of  the  mind  itself.  We  do  not  dream  of  doing  so  in 
the  case  of  the  social  environment;  no  form  of  Subjective 
Idealism  has  been  consistent  enough  to  '  analyse  away '  other 
selves  into  forms  of  the  conscious  experience  of  the  subject  by 
whom  they  are  known  and  whom  they  influence.  Why,  then, 
should  we  so  treat  that  other  environment  of  external  nature, 
which  presents  itself  so  obviously  to  unsophisticated  people 
as  an  independent  reality  with  which  they  are  in  relation? 
My  natural  realism  consists,  first  of  all,  in  refusing  to  ob- 
literate this  manifest  distinctness  in  existence,  as  the  Men- 
talistic  argument  constantly  tends  to  do,  and,  secondly,  in 
declining  to  follow  the  seductive  example  of  the  Pan-psychists 
who,  while  accepting  a  real  independence  or  distinctness,  trans- 
mute the  apparently  unconscious  system  of  nature  into  a 
multitude  of  infmitesimally  conscious  centres.  My  difficulty 
with  Pan-psychism  is  that  if  we  are  in  earnest  with  the 
spiritual  or  psychic  nature  of  the  monads,  we  lose  once  more, 
as  in  Mentalism,  the  idea  of  environment,  in  the  sense  in  which 
it  seems  to  be  involved  in  the  existence  of  a  finite  spirit.  In  one 
sense,  doubtless,  it  may  be  contended  that  Pan-psychism  does 
provide  an  environment  for  the  individual,  to  wit,  the  social 
environment  constituted  by  all  the  other  co-existing  monads. 
But  the  social  environment  is,  in  our  experience,  based  upon 
the  natural.  Spirits,  for  their  individuation,  self-expression 
and  intercomunication,  appear  to  require  bodies  and  the  system 
of  nature  in  which  these  bodies  are  rooted ;  and  to  resolve  these 
bodies  and  the  whole  material  world  into  little  minds  is  the 
beginning  of  an  infinite  progress.  These  little  minds  in  turn 
imply  some  medium  in  which  they  are  shaped  and  through 
which  they  can  act. 


426  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 


NOTE  D.    THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  THE  FINITE 
INDIVIDUAL 

Lectures  XIV  and  XV  have  been  the  subject  of  a  good 
deal  of  discussion.  The  central  question  of  these  lectures 
has  been  defined  in  an  apt  phrase  by  Professor  Bosanquet 
as  '  the  teleological  status  of  finite  spirits  in  the  universe ',  and 
as  such  it  formed  the  subject  of  debate  at  one  of  the  annual 
Symposia  of  the  Aristotelian  Society  in  July  1918.  As  actu- 
ally formulated  for  discussion,  the  question  proposed  took  the 
somewhat  technical,  and,  as  it  proved,  not  altogether  unam- 
biguous form,  '  Do  finite  individuals  possess  a  substantive  or 
an  adjectival  mode  of  being?',  but  the  vital  issue  underlying 
this  abstract  formula  was  (again  in  Professor  Bosanquet's 
words)  the  'real  contrast  of  tendency',  'the  distinction  be- 
tween two  attitudes  to  life',  on  which  I  had  dwelt  in  Lec- 
tures XIV  and  XV.  The  Symposium  consisted  of  papers  by 
Professor  Bosanquet,  myself,  Professor  Stout  and  Viscount 
Haldane  (in  the  order  given)  concluding  with  a  Reply  by 
Professor  Bosanquet.  The  first  four  papers  are  included  in 
the  volume  of  the  Society's  Proceedings  for  1917-18,  and  the 
whole  Symposium  has  been  republished  separately  in  the 
volume  Life  and  Individuality,  edited  for  the  Society  by 
Professor  Wildon  Carr. 

I  may  be  permitted  here  to  transcribe  a  page  or  two  from 
my  own  contribution  as  an  extension  or  further  enforcement 
of  the  argument  in  the  Lectures.  An  illustration  used  by 
Professor  Bosanquet  in  his  introductory  paper  will  best  intro- 
duce my  remarks. 

4  A  simple  analogy  from  knowledge  (he  said)  supports  the 
conception  that  the  perfection  of  the  finite  individual  would 
imply  a  change  in  his  identity,  and  possibly  an  absorption  into 
another's.  If  my  philosophy  were  made  complete  and  self- 
consistent,  I  am  sure  my  critics  would  admit,  it  could  no 
longer  be  identified  with  that  which  I  profess  as  mine;  but 
would  probably  amalgamate  with  that  of  some  one  else,  and 
in  the  end  with  that  of  all.  I  do  not  know  why  the  same 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  427 

should  not  be  the  case  with  myself.'  (Life  and  Finite  Indi- 
viduality, p.  99.) 

The  use  of  such  an  analogy  could  not  but  confirm  my  im- 
pression of  the  extent  to  which  Professor  Bosanquet's  general 
theory  depends  on  a  too  exclusive  reference  to  the  logical 
analysis  of  knowledge.  But  the  logical  analysis  of  knowledge 
(I  wrote)  'yields  us  no  more  than  the  Kantian  unity  of 
apperception,  which,  as  such,  is  no  real  self  (whether  hu- 
man or  divine)  but  simply  the  ideal  unity  of  systematised 
knowledge.  Kant  himself  equates  the  subjective  unity  with  the 
idea  of  Nature  as  a  *  Natur-einheit '  or  systematic  unity.  It  is 
the  idea  of  the  unity  of  the  universe  as  an  intelligible  system, 
an  idea  which  Kant  insists  is  a  necessary  idea,  the  necessary 
presupposition  of  any  knowledge  whatsoever.  I  am  far  from 
disparaging  the  importance  of  this  conception  in  its  proper 
reference  in  logic  or  epistemology ;  but  to  treat  the  postulate 
of  knowledge  as  itself  a  real  being — the  so-called  universal  con- 
sciousness— is  in  effect  to  hypostatise  an  abstraction.  And 
if  we  restrict  our  attention  to  knowledge-content,  there  is  no 
ground  discernible  for  the  distinction  and  multiplication  of 
personalities.  These  are  at  best  only  different  points  of  view — 
peepholes,  so  to  speak — from  which  an  identical  content  is 
contemplated.  They  are  distinguishable,  therefore,  only  by  the 
greater  range  of  content  which  they  command  and  the  greater 
coherence  which  they  are  consequently  able  to  introduce 
into  their  world-scheme.  The  natural  consummation  of  such 
limited  points  of  view  is  to  be  pieced  together  and  har- 
monised in  the  central  or  universal  viewpoint  from  which,  with 
all  the  facts  before  us,  we  should  be  able  to  see  them  all  in 
their  proper  relations  as  a  completely  coherent  system.  The 
existence  of  finite  centres  at  all  is  a  superfluity  for  the  theory, 
which  accepts  it  (somewhat  ungraciously)  as  a  fact  which 
cannot  well  be  denied,  but  a  distinction  whose  '  precarious  and 
superficial  nature '  it  cannot  sufficiently  emphasise. 

My  position,  on  the  contrary,  is  that  belief  in  the  relative 
independence  of  human  personalities  and  belief  in  the  exist- 
ence of  God  as  a  living  Being  are  bound  up  together.  Thus 
I  interpret  the  meaning  of  creation.  The  process  of  the  finite 


428  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

world  means  the  actual  origination  of  new  centres  of  life  and 
agency,  not  created  by  a  magical  word  of  evocation,  but  given 
the  opportunity  to  make  themselves.  Professor  Bosanquet  in 
his  chapters  on  the  '  Moulding  of  Souls  ',  describes  this  process 
suggestively  as  one  of  '  eliciting  our  own  souls  from  their  out- 
sides  ',  but  he  admits  later  that  '  elicit ',  though  a  useful  word, 
'  covers  an  almost  miraculous  creation  which  it  does  not 
explain '.  The  process  is  in  truth  not  simply  '  almost '  but 
wholly  miraculous,  if  by  that  is  meant  that,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  we,  who  are  its  products,  cannot  understand  the 
method  of  our  own  creation  any  more  than  we  can  fully 
reconcile  to  ourselves  the  separateness  and  moral  independence 
of  the  status  achieved  with  the  relation  of  creaturely  depend- 
ence which  is  involved  from  the  beginning  and  persists  to  the 
end.  But  the  process  goes  on  daily  before  our  eyes  in  every 
case  of  the  growth  of  a  mind,  and  my  contention  is  that  it  is 
to  be  accepted,  not  as  an  unexplained  and  puzzling  exception 
to  an  otherwise  intelligible  scheme  of  things,  but  as  itself  the 
illuminative  fact  in  which  the  meaning  of  the  whole  finite 
process  may  be  read. 

Professor  Bosanquet  says,  '  I  cannot  believe  that  the  supreme 
end  of  the  Absolute  is  to  give  rise  to  beings  such  as  I  ex- 
perience myself  to  be '.  But  to  put  the  case  in  that  way  is 
hardly  to  put  it  fairly.  It  is  not  I,  '  such  as  I  experience 
myself  to  be  ',  or,  as  he  puts  it  in  the  previous  page,  the 
finite  spirit  *  as  it  stands  and  experiences  itself  with  all  its  im- 
perfections on  its  head ',  which  can  be  conceived  as  the  end  of 
the  Absolute  (and  apparently  the  finished  result  of  all  its 
pains)  ;  it  is  the  spirit  as  God  knows  it  and  intends  it  to  be- 
come, the  spirit  with  its  infinite  potentialities  and  aspirations 
and  the  consciousness  of  its  own  imperfections,  which  is  the 
fulcrum  of  its  advance  and  the  guarantee  of  a  nobler  future. 
This  is  what  Professor  Bosanquet  means  by  the  '  intentional ' 
as  opposed  to  the  '  given '  unity  of  the  self.  Our  unity,  he 
says,  is  '  a  puzzle  and  an  unsatisfied  aspiration  ' — it  is  a  '  de- 
mand ',  a  '  pretension '  which  is  never  made  good.  And  he 
takes  the  line  of  arguing  that  because  the  desire  for  immor- 
tality, so  far  as  it  is  conceived  in  a  religious  spirit  and  deserves 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  429 

serious  consideration,  is  not  a  desire  for  the  perpetuation  and 
stereotyping  of  my  present  self  in  all  its  poverty  and  mean- 
ness, but  rather  a  desire  to  be  fashioned  more  and  more  in  the 
likeness  of  a  perfect  humanity,  therefore  it  is  not  a  desire 
for  personal  continuance  at  all,  but,  strictly  speaking,  he 
seems  to  say,  inconsistent  with  it.  It  is  identification  with 
perfection  which  we  seek,  in  the  sense  of  merging  our  own 
personality  altogether  in  that  of  the  Perfect  Being.  As  he 
puts  it  in  his  Gifford  Lecture,  it  is  not  '  our '  personality  but 
'  a '  personality,  whose  eternity  the  moral  and  religious  con- 
sciousness demands,  and  so  it  is  '  no  puzzle ',  he  concludes, 
*  no  "  faith  as  vague  as  all  unsweet ",'  to  offer  the  eternal 
reality  of  the  Absolute  as  that  realisation  of  ourself  which 
we  instinctively  demand  and  desire.'  Surely  this  is  to  misread 
the  situation.  Because  I  desire  to  be  made  more  and  more 
in  the  likeness  of  God,  I  do  not  therefore  desire  to  be  God. 
The  development  of  a  personality  in  knowledge  and  goodness 
does  not  take  place  through  confluence  with  other  personalities, 
nor  is  its  goal  and  consummation  to  yield  up  its  proper  being 
and  be  '  blended  with  innumerable  other  selves  '  in  the  Abso- 
lute. In  spite  of  Professor  Bosanquet's  fresh  attempts  at 
justification,  and  in  spite  of  the  ecstatic  utterances  of  the 
mystics,  I  maintain  that  the  idea  of  blending  or  absorption 
depends  entirely  on  material  analogies  which  can  have  no  ap- 
plication in  the  case  of  selves.  '  I  surrender  my  soul  heartily 
to  God,'  wrote  Labadie,  the  French  Pietist,  in  his  last  will  and 
testament,  '  giving  it  back  like  a  drop  of  water  to  its  source, 
and  rest  confident  in  Him,  praying  God,  my  origin  and  ocean, 
that  He  will  take  me  unto  Himself  and  engulf  me  eternally 
in  the  divine  abyss  of  His  Being.'  The  physical  metaphor 
dominates  the  whole  conception.  But  absorption  or  '  engulf- 
ment ',  in  the  case  of  a  spiritual  being,  means  only  the  ex- 
tinction of  one  centre  of  intelligence  and  love,  without  any 
conceivable  gain  to  other  intelligences  or  to  the  content  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole.  Did  Labadie  suppose  that  he  had  not 
already  his  being  in  God,  or  that  a  union  founded  in  knowl- 
edge and  love  and  conscious  service  is  not  closer  and  more 
intimate  by  far  than  any  which  can  be  represented  by  the 


430  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

fusion  of  material  things?  Did  he  suppose  that  the  engulf- 
ment  of  his  private  being  could  in  any  way  enrich  the  fontal 
Life  from  which  it  sprang?  Surely  his  value  to  God,  or  that 
of  any  other  worshipping  saint,  must  be  held  to  lie  in  the  per- 
sonality of  the  worshipper.  The  existence  of  an  individual 
centre  of  knowledge  and  feeling  is  in  itself  an  enrichment  of 
the  universe,  and  the  clearer  and  intenser  the  flame  of  the  in- 
dividual life,  the  greater  proportionally  the  enrichment.  To 
merge  or  blend  such  centres  is  simply  to  put  out  the  lights 
one  by  one.  In  the  society  of  such  individuals,  and  in  their 
communion  with  God,  the  supreme  values  of  the  universe 
emerge,  and  it  is  not  personal  vanity  which  suggests  that  for 
the  Absolute  such  communion  must  possess  a  living  value 
which  no  solitary  perfection  or  contemplative  felicity  could 
yield. 


NOTE  E.     GOD  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 

Various  critics  have  referred  to  the  fact  that  these  two 
terms  are  apparently  used  in  the  Lectures  interchangeably. 
The  fullest  criticism  of  my  terminology  in  this  respect  occurs 
in  the  course  of  a  very  sympathetic  article  by  Professor  H.  R. 
Mackintosh  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  December  1917. 
He  shows  by  a  collation  of  passages  that  the  two  terms  appear 
to  be  directly  equated  with  one  another,  and  he  urges  that 
such  sheer  identification  is  inconsistent  with  the  ethical  Theism 
with  which  my  argument  concludes.  The  apparent  equation 
leads  Professor  Widgery,  in  the  Indian  Philosophical  Review, 
No.  i,  to  attack  my  position  as  undiluted  'Absolutism '.  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet  and  Dean  Rashdall  have  commented,  from 
different  points  of  view,  on  the  same  usage.  It  would  perhaps 
be  more  correct  to  say  that  I  frequently  use  the  terms  indif- 
ferently than  that  I  expressly  identify  them.  And  in  some  of 
the  passages,  as  when  I  speak,  for  example,  of  'a  principle  of 
explanation  which  we  name  the  Absolute  or  God ',  or,  again, 
of  'the  conception  of  a  rerum  natura,  whether  we  call  it 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  431 

Nature,  the  Absolute,  or  God ',  the  '  or '  may  fairly,  I  think, 
be  taken  as  chronicling  a  variation  in  philosophical  usage, 
which  is  unessential  for  the  point  under  discussion,  rather  than 
as  indicating  a  personal  view  of  the  precise  equivalence  of  the 
terms.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  two  terms  in  question  are 
plainly  not  precise  equivalents  in  the  sense  that  the  one  may 
be  substituted  for  the  other  in  any  context;  and  an  examina- 
tion of  the  variations  in  my  own  usage  would  indicate,  I 
believe,  a  growing  differentiation  between  the  two  as  the 
argument  proceeds.  This  is  partly  due  to  the  progressive 
nature  of  my  argument  which  Professor  Mackintosh  rightly 
signalises,  and  on  which  I  may  be  permitted  for  a  moment 
to  dwell.  The  whole  of  the  first  series  of  lectures  was  devoted 
to  the  establishment,  as  against  Naturalism,  of  the  general 
position  of  Idealism.  The  argument  did  not  go  beyond  the 
world  of  finite  experience:  it  was  content  to  recognise  in  the 
process  of  that  world  an  indwelling  reason  and  purpose.  '  God 
as  immanent/  I  said,  in  opening  the  second  series,  might  be 
described  as  the  next  of  the  first  year's  lectures ;  but,  so  far, 
the  further  issue  between  an  impersonal  Absolutism  and 
a  Theism  which  should  be  at  once  ethical  and  religious  re- 
mained undetermined.  All  the  more  distinctively  speculative 
questions  as  to  the  meaning  of  creation,  the  degree  of  inde- 
pendence compatible  with  a  derived  existence,  the  possibility 
and  nature  of  a  divine  experience — these  and  other  cognate 
questions  all  remained  to  be  dealt  with  in  the  second  series. 
Inadequate  as  must  inevitably  be  the  treatment  of  such  prob- 
lems, the  questions  were  at  least  faced  and  considered,  and  it 
seems  to  me  on  reflection  that  the  sifting  of  the  difficulties 
helped  to  clarify  my  own  thought,  making  distinctions  clearer 
and  more  explicit,  and  thus  insensibly  superseding  phrases 
which  bore  an  intelligible  meaning  in  the  earlier  context  in 
which  they  occurred.  Something  of  this  kind  happened,  I 
think,  with  the  terms  '  God  '  and  '  the  Absolute  '  when  the  fact 
of  the  divine  transcendence  became  as  obvious  as  the  doctrine 
of  immanence  dwelt  on  in  the  earlier  series.  But,  in  spite  of 
this  differentiation,  the  two  terms  will  undoubtedly  be  found 
used  from  time  to  time  as  interchangeable  even  to  the  end; 


432  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

and  perhaps  I  may  be  able  to  show  that  the  usage  is  defensible 
and  need  cause  no  real  confusion  of  thought. 

Why,  it  may  be  asked,  retain  at  all  a  term  like  the  Absolute, 
apparently  so  ambiguous  in  its  import  and  so  questionable  in 
its  antecedents  ?  Dean  Rashdall  would  prefer  to  dispense  with 
it  altogether  and  to  speak  simply  of  '  the  Universe ',  which  he 
would  then  describe  as  consisting  of  '  God  and  the  finite 
centres '.  There  is  an  apparent  simplification  here  which  is 
attractive;  but  it  is  a  simplification  reached,  it  seems  to  me, 
by  sacrificing  the  conception  of  immanence,  and  reverting  to  a 
purely  deistic  view  of  the  relation  of  God  to  the  spirits  whom 
He  is  said  to  create.  '  Universe '  is,  moreover,  too  cold  and 
threadbare  a  term  to  serve  as  the  ultimate  designation  of  the 
living  Fact  we  seek  to  name.  Etymologically,  no  doubt,  it 
was  intended  to  imply  the  unity  and  system  of  the  whole,  as 
opposed  to  what  Carlyle  called  a  multiverse  or  chaos.  But 
the  implication  hardly  survives  in  ordinary  usage,  and  the 
term  is  perhaps  most  commonly  used  not  as  an  all-inclusive 
term  but  of  the  world  as  distinguished  from  God,  its  primary 
suggestion  being  that  of  the  immeasurable  fields  of  space  dotted 
with  innumerable  suns  and  planets.  In  any  case,  its  associa- 
tions are  with  the  '  bad '  infinite,  the  endless  progress ;  it  lacks 
almost  entirely  the  suggestion  of  a  self-contained  and  inter- 
nally organised  whole,  beyond  which  there  is  nothing.  The 
latter  is  the  true  philosophical  meaning  of  the  Absolute,  and 
it  is  well  to  have  a  term  to  express  just  this  meaning.  For  any 
idealist  or  spiritual  view,  reality  is  a  systematic  whole  of  this 
description.  Such  a  theory  as  I  have  tried  to  expound  finds  it 
impossible  to  take  God  and  the  world  as  two  separate  and  in- 
dependently existing  facts.  A  deistically  conceived  God,  exist- 
ing in  solitary  state  before  the  world  was,  and  to  whom  the 
finite  world  bears  only  a  contingent  relation  is,  I  have  insisted, 
a  figment  of  the  logical  imagination.  God  exists  only  as  a 
self -communicating  Life:  in  theological  language,  creation  is 
an  eternal  act  or  process — a  process  which  must  be  ultimately 
understood  not  as  the  making  of  something  out  of  nothing 
but  as  a  self -revelation  of  the  divine  in  and  to  finite  spirits. 
Such,  I  said,  is  '  the  eternal  fashion  of  the  cosmic  life '.  This, 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  433 

then,  is  the  true  Absolute,  a  term  which  would  be  inapplicable 
to  the  transcendent  God  of  an  abstract  monotheism,  but  which 
is  not  unfitly  applied  to  the  sweep  of  a  Life  which  realises 
itself  in  and  through  the  process  of  the  finite  world,  as  con- 
summated in  the  divine  sonship  of  man.  It  is  always,  I  think, 
of  God  as  thus  organic  to  the  world  that  the  term  '  the  Abso- 
lute '  is  used  in  my  volume,  and  Professor  Ward's  hyphened 
phrase  '  God-and-the-world '  would  therefore  exactly  express 
the  meaning  I  had  intended  to  convey. 

It  is  plain  that  the  process  involves  a  real  otherness  in  the 
finite  selves  and  this  is  strongly  emphasised  in  my  argument. 
I  have  protested  against  the  monism  which  treats  the  indi- 
vidual selves  as  merely  the  channels  through  which  a  single 
universal  consciousness  thinks  and  acts — masks,  as  it  were, 
of  the  one  actor  who  takes  all  the  parts  in  the  cosmic  drama. 
And  I  have  protested  equally  against  the  opposite  idea,  which 
denies  any  divine  self-consciousness  except  that  which  is 
realised  in  the  finite  individuals.  My  argument  presupposes 
at  every  turn  a  comprehensive  divine  experience  which  is  other 
than,  and  infinitely  more  than,  that  of  any  finite  self  or  of  all 
finite  selves  collectively,  if  their  several  contributions  could 
be  somehow  pieced  together.  If  the  first  view  abolishes  the 
reality  of  the  finite  selves,  the  second  recognises  them  alone  as 
real,  reducing  God  to  the  status  of  an  abstract  universal.  In 
opposition  to  these  two  extremes  I  maintain,  as  I  have  always 
maintained,  the  real  individuality  and  ethical  independence  of 
the  finite  selves  as  the  fundamental  condition  of  the  moral  life ; 
and  I  accept  at  the  same  time  the  reality  of  a  divine  or  perfect 
consciousness,  because  the  process  of  human  experience  and 
the  possibility  of  progress  in  goodness  and  truth  remain  to  me 
inexplicable,  unless  the  finite  creature  is  grounded  in  and  il- 
luminated by  such  a  creative  Spirit.  The  otherness  which  I 
recognise  is,  of  course,  most  conspicuous  when  regarded  from 
the  side  of  will,  but  it  must  be  admitted  to  hold  good  through 
the  whole  range  of  self-conscious  experience.  No  mental  ex- 
perience of  mine  can,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  my  experience, 
form  part  of  the  experience  of  any  other  mind.  Uniqueness 
belongs  to  the  very  notion  of  a  self  or  consciousness.  That 


434  SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES 

being  so,  it  follows — follows,  I  might  say,  ex  vi  termini — that, 
as  Dean  Rashdall  contends,  it  is  meaningless  to  speak  of  one 
consciousness  as  '  included  in  another,'  or  to  speak  of  '  a  Mind 
which  includes  all  minds ',  and  of  man  as,  in  that  sense,  '  a  part 
of  God '.  Even  those  who,  like  Mr.  Bradley,  speak  exclusively 
of  the  Absolute,  do  not  suggest  that  the  experiences  of  the 
finite  centres  form  part,  as  such,  of  the  absolute  experience, 
but  only  as,  in  some  fashion,  supplemented,  transmuted,  har- 
monised.1 They  could  only  form  part,  as  such,  of  a  divine  or 
absolute  consciousness,  if  that  consciousness  is  identified  and 
equated  with  the  collectivity  of  the  finite  centres  in  which  it 
is  said  to  realise  itself;  and  in  that  case  there  would  be  no 
divine  or  absolute  experience  at  all  in  the  sense  of  the  present 
discussion. 

But  while  we  recognise  that  the  experiences  of  finite  selves 
do  not  form  part  of  the  divine  experience  in  the  same  sense 
in  which  they  are  the  experiences  of  the  selves  in  question,  it 
is  well  to  be  on  our  guard  against  the  implications  of  language 
which  might  lead  us  to  say  that  '  all  the  conclusions  which 
are  applicable  to  each  particular  self  in  his  relation  to  another 
seem  to  be  equally  applicable  to  the  relation  between  God  and 
any  other  spirit/  God  means,  for  philosophy  at  all  events, 
not  simply  or  primarily  the  existence  of  another  self-conscious 
Being,  but  rather  the  infinite  values  of  which  His  life  is  the 
eternal  fruition  and  which  are  freely  offered  to  all  spirits  for 
their  appropriation  and  enjoyment.  Truth,  Beauty,  Goodness, 
Love — these  constitute  the  being  of  God — '  the  fulness  of  the 
Godhead,'  brokenly  manifested  in  this  world  of  time.  God 
is  Love.2  '  God  Himself,'  said  St.  Bernard,  '  is  manifested  in 
His  wisdom  and  His  goodness,  for  God  consists  of  these  His 
attributes.'  Both  God  and  man  in  fact  become  bare  points  of 
mere  existence — impossible  abstractions — if  we  try  to  separate 

1  Cf.  Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality,  p.  413,  '  otherwise  than  in  their 
several  immediacies '. 

2  Similarly  in  the  later  Neo-Platonic  philosophy  the  supreme  princi- 
ple is  called  the  Good  not  in  the  sense  that  good  is  a  predicate  of  it: 
Good  is  it.    Cf.  Professor  Taylor's  paper  on  "  Proclus  ",  in  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  vol.  xviii,  p.  613. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTES  435 

them  from  one  another  and  from  the  structural  elements  of 
their  common  life.  Hence,  in  speaking  of  God  in  His  relation 
to  the  world,  the  expressions  I  use  by  preference  are  rather 
such  as  '  the  containing  life  '  (p.  225),  '  the  sustaining  and  con- 
taining Life  of  all  the  worlds  '  (p.  389),  'the  ultimate  Experi- 
ence on  which  we  depend '  (p.  364).  I  speak  of  '  the  creative 
and  informing  Spirit'  (p.  363),  'the  universal  life'  in  which 
the  finite  individuals  share  (p.  390),  '  the  nature  of  the  whole ' 
on  which  they  draw  (p.  383), '  the  fontal  life  of  God  '  (p.  294), 
and  I  describe  that  life — metaphorically,  no  doubt — in  opposi- 
tion to  Professor  Bosanquet's  analogy  of  a  continuum,  as  '  the 
focal  unity  of  a  world  of  self-conscious  worlds  to  which  it  is 
not  only  their  sustaining  substance  but  the  illumination  of  their 
lives  '  (p.  297).  Some  of  these  expressions  are  doubtless  open 
to  criticism,  and  I  do  not  put  forward  any  of  them  as  faultless, 
but  what  the  phrases  aim  at  is  to  keep  in  view  at  once  the 
transcendent  being  of  God  for  Himself,  which  we  inadequately 
figure  to  ourselves  as  a  self-consciousness  or  personality  on  the 
model  of  our  own,  and  the  creative  and  illuminative  activity 
of  the  same  Spirit  in  the  beings  which  live,  and  are  sustained 
in  life,  only  through  its  self-communicating  presence. 


INDEX 


Absolute,  the,  155-7,  174,  407-17; 
the  Absolute  and  the  finite  indi- 
vidual, Lectures  XII,  XIV,  XV 
passim;  the  Absolute  as  the  un- 
related, 304;  purpose  and  ac- 
tivity in  the  Absolute,  338-41 ; 
the  Absolute  and  the  time-proc- 
ess, 360-5;  Dr.  Rashdall's  dis- 
tinction between  the  Absolute 
and  God,  387-91 ;  Dr.  McTag- 
gart's  Absolute,  391-3.  William 
James's  conception  of  the  Abso- 
lute, 397-9- 

Absolutism,  225,  242,  262,  291,  341, 
401,  414. 

Actual  and  the  real,  243-55. 

Adamson,  Robert,  52,  301  n. 

Agnosticism,   7,   51,   58-9,    118-19, 

158-75,  214-15- 

Animal  mind,  100-3. 

Appearance  and  reality,  131-2,  136, 
158-63,  175,  216-19. 

Appearance  and  mere  appearance, 
277. 

Aristotle,  interpretation  of  de- 
velopment through  the  idea  of 
End,  1 06,  154,  332;  conception  of 
the  divine  activity  as  the  eternal 
thinking  upon  thought,  113,  304, 
346,  408-9 ;  the  individual  as  the 
concrete  universal,  266,  272 ;  the 
common  sensibles,  127  n. ;  the 
First  Mover,  251,  319;  matter 
and  form,  305-6;  casualty  or 
accident,  416. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  26,  268,  291. 

Athanasius,   410  n. 

Augustine,  St.,  295,  303-4,  365. 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  40. 

Authority  and  reason,  62-3. 

Automatism,   see   Epiphenomenal- 


Bacon,  6,  152,  246. 
Bain,  A.,  91,  284. 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  41,  58-64,  199, 

379- 

Beauty  and  sublimity,  127-9. 
Belief,  see  Faith. 


Benevolence,  Hume  and  Mill  on 
divine,  403,  406. 

Bergson,  48,  69,  85,  155,  259,  .342, 
Lecture  XIX  passim;  on  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  346,  on  duree 
reelle,  352. 

Berkeley,  51,  228,  309,  392;  his 
world  of  internal  experience, 
116-18,  183,  201-2;  his  satirical 
handling  of  agnosticism,  161 ; 
circular  nature  of  his  mentalistic 
argument,  190-3. 

Biology,  Lecture  IV  passim,  107-8, 
209. 

Blake,  144. 

Body  and  Mind,  99,  124-6. 

Bois-Reymond,  Du,  92  n.,  104-5. 

Bosanquet,  B.,  30,  191  n.,  373,  413; 
on  body  and  mind,  99;  on  the 
secondary  and  '  tertiary '  quali- 
ties, 122,  127;  on  statistical  re- 
sults, 186-8;  on  the  criterion  of 
value,  225-42;  on  the  cosmo- 
logical  argument,  251 ;  on  the 
Absolute  and  the  finite  indi- 
vidual, Lectures  XIV,  XV;  use 
of  the  social  analogy,  296-7 ;  on 
the  function  of  the  material 
world,  308 ;  on  the  temporal  and 
the  eternal,  343,  355,  368 ;  on  '  the 
chapter  of  accidents  ',  416-17. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  190  n.,  203,  215-16, 
256,  301,  342,  390  n.,  399;  on 
degrees  of  reality,  220-2 ;  on  the 
criterion  of  value,  225-42,  334; 
on  the  religious  consciousness, 
252. 

Bridges,  J.  H.,  150. 

Browning,  27,  44,  95,  114,  142,  244, 
260. 

Brunetiere,  64. 

Bruno,  105. 

Butler,  Bishop,  63. 

Caird,  E.,  136,  146,  149-50,  199  n., 

245,  250,  334,  409. 
Carlyle,    156,   158. 
Carr,     Professor    Wildon,    351-3, 

384-5. 


438 


INDEX 


Casualty,  involved  in  the  existence 
of  the  finite,  415-16. 

Categories,  right  of  each  science  to 
use  its  own,  72,  79,  94,  107-8, 
209;  philosophy  as  criticism  of 
categories,  108. 

Cause — a  '  first '  cause,  301 ;  cause 
as  ground  or  reason,  302 ;  ef- 
ficient causation  inapplicable  to 
the  relation  between  spirits,  315- 
16. 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  327  n. 

Chance,  Mr.  Peirce's  derivation  of 
laws  from  pure  chance,  185. 

Christianity,  144,  157,  291,  306-9, 
314-15,  409-17- 

Clifford,  W.  K.,  181-2. 

Cognition,  misleading  implication 
of  the  term,  113-14. 

Coleridge,  106,  128,  314. 

Comte,  70,  Lecture  VII  passim, 
153,  157-8,  213-14,  238. 

Conation,  involved  in  satisfaction, 
336-8 ;  conative  structure  of  con- 
sciousness, 356-7. 

Confluence  of  selves,  262  ff. 

Contingence  and  freedom,  in 
James  and  Bergson,  374. 

Continuity  and  the  emergence  of 
real  differences,  90-104. 

Copernicus,  28,  82. 

Cosmological  argument,  249-51. 

Creation,  285,  288,  Lecture  XVI 
passim,  415. 

'  Creative  synthesis  ',  95. 

Creative  evolution,  155,  366,  370-4, 
380-3. 

Criterion  of  value,  Lecture  XII. 

Dante,  40-1,  104  n. 

Darwin,  66,  81-4,  328. 

Degrees  of  truth  and  reality,  222-3. 

Deism,  34-6,  46,  207,  298,  312. 

Design,  the  argument  from,  70  n., 

76  n. ;  Hume's  discussion,  9-16 ; 

as    affected    by    the    theory    of 

natural  selection,  322-8. 
Descartes,  49,  in,  115,  302,  393  n. ; 

on  the  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being, 

246-8. 
Determinism,  the  illusion  of,  367- 

70,  375- 

Development,  philosophical  mean- 
ing and  implications  of,  105-7, 

153-6. 
Dewey,  Professor  J.,  112. 


Driesch,  H.,  69,  72,  74  n.,  77-80. 

Dualism,  between  '  the  heart '  and 
the  reason,  47,  65;  Cartesian 
dualism,  115;  between  ethical 
man  and  nature,  83,  132-3;  in 
Greek  thought,  305-6. 

Duration  and  succession,  349-54. 

Eckhart,  314  n. 

Elan  vital,  completely  indetermi- 
nate, 378-9. 

Eliot,  George,  406-7. 

Elliot,  Hugh  S.  R.,  164  n. 

Emerson,  292  n.,  373. 

End,  as  the  ultimate  category  of 
philosophical  explanation,  29, 
1 06,  154-5,  331-2,  340. 

Energy,  supposed  results  of  the 
degradation  of,  300. 

Environment,  significance  of  the 
term,  83. 

Epigenesis,  95. 

Epiphenomenalism,  114  n.,  356. 

Erdmann,  J.  E.,  409. 

Erigena,  Scotus,  314. 

Essence  and  appearance,  160-6. 

Eternal,  Eternity,  Lectures  XVIII, 
XIX  passim. 

Eucken,  R.,  242. 

Evil,  400  ff. 

Evolution,  of  sense-organs,  126-7. 
Cf.  Development. 

Experience,  relation  of  philosophy 
to,  66-7 ;  learning  by  experience 
characteristic  of  the  living  being, 
85 ;  planes  of  experience,  97, 
100-2,  154-5. 

Explanation,  scientific,  91 ;  philo- 
sophical, 106,  154,  331. 

External  world,  its  instrumental  or* 
mediating  function,  178,  200,  295, 
308. 

Faith,  definition  of,  82;  distin- 
guished from  Knowledge,  49,  55, 
239-42. 

Ferrier,  J.  F.,  193-5,  199- 

Fichte,  29,  38,  219,  310-11,  378. 

Flint,  Robert,  299-302,  399. 

Fouillee,  A.,  130-1. 

Fraser,  A.  Campbell,  240,  291  n., 
315. 

Freedom,  a  postulate  and  a  fact, 
31-2,  287-8,  291-3 ;  Monadism 
and  freedom,  183-7 ',  M.  Bergson 


INDEX 


439 


on    freedom    and    contingency, 
370-9- 

Galileo,  49. 

Gassendi,  49. 

Geddes,  Professor  Patrick,  83, 
108  n. 

God  as  immanent,  37,  175-7,  215- 
22;  as  transcendent,  the  source 
of  ideals,  243-55;  a  finite  God, 
see  Hume,  Mill,  James. 

Goethe,  246,  411,  413  n. 

Gray,  Professor  Asa,  328  n. 

Green,  T.  H.,  155 ;  the  formal 
nature  of  his  spiritual  principle, 
I95-9»  347!  his  dissolution  of 
Nature  into  thought-relations, 
202-3. 

Haeckel,  E.,  84,  181,  328. 

Haldane,  Dr.  j.  S.,  70,  73-5,  76  n. 

Haldane,  Lord,  217-18. 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  7,  43,  51, 
124-6,  161-5,  214. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  138,  168-70. 

Hartmann,  E.  von,  27  n.,  53  n.,  124, 
173,  298  n. 

Hegel,  38,  67,  131  n.,  177,  218,  256, 
296,  304,  334,  339,  362,  415;  on 
the  truth  as  the  whole,  154,  331 ; 
on  the  logic  of  religion,  250-1 ; 
the  Hegelian  Trinity  and  the  de- 
duction of  the  many  from  the 
one,  309-13 ;  the  Absolute  and 
the  illusion  of  the  finite,  340, 
412-13. 

Heraclitus,  342,  385. 

Hobbes,  49. 

Hodgson,  Shadworth,  114  n. 

Hpffding,  39,  144,  207,  214. 

Hogg,  Professor  A.  G.,  200  n. 

Howison,  Professor  G.  H.,  316-21, 
386,  412  n. 

Hume,  Lecture  I  passim,  25,  34,  46, 
103,  187-8,  201-2,  207,  294,  322; 
on  a  finite  deity,  19,  401-2;  a 
cause  must  be  judged  by  its 
known  effects,  18,  176,  244-5, 
249 ;  unity  and  relatedness  as  fic- 
tions of  the  imagination,  196 ; 
Mr.  Balfour's  scepticism  com- 
pared with  Hume's,  60;  Hume's 
purely  hedonistic  ideal,  406. 

Humanity,  Religion  of,  137-58. 

Humanism,  238. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  12,  no  n.,  328;  on 


Hume's  theism,  16,  22;  on  the 
breach  between  the  ethical  and 
the  cosmic  process,  26,  83,  132-3 ; 
his  conscious  automatism,  51 ; 
his  Berkeleian  sensationalism, 
81. 

Ideal  and  the  actual,  Lecture  XIII 
passim ;  the  ideal  and  the  real, 
53,  .25 1 -2. 

Idealism  v.  Naturalism,  38-42,  181, 
236;  speculative  idealism,  38,  56, 
57,  409;  subjective  idealism,  see 
Mentalism. 

Imagination,  the  truth  of  the 
poetic,  127. 

Immanence,  37,  175-7,  215-16; 
Spinoza's  doctrine  of  imma- 
nence, 221 ;  immanence  and 
transcendence,  253-5. 

Immortality,  43-5,  269-71. 

Incarnation,  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the,  144,  157,  307, 
409-10. 

Indiscernibles,  identity  of,  267. 

Individual,  the  finite,  Lectures 
XIV,  XV  passim. 

Infinite,  its  active  presence  in  the 
finite,  247,  251,  254. 

James,  William,  41,  117,  144,  196, 
242,  268,  412,  413,  414;  on  a 
finite  God,  19,  382,  393-4;  on  the 
specious  present,  352-3 ;  on  de- 
terminism, 367-8;  on  an  un- 
finished world  and  contingency, 
366,  373-4,  377  n. ;  on  pluralism, 
393-9;  on  meliorism,  382,  394. 

Janet,  Paul,  310,  325-6. 

Jennings,  H.  S.,  74. 

Judgements  of  value,  objectivity 
of,  41,  241-2 ;  not  to  be  taken  as 
detached  intuitions,  223. 

Kant,  4,  8,  21  n.,  Lecture  II  passim, 
48-51,  69,  81,  in,  147,  176,  198, 
207,  240,  254,  301,  371 ;  on  intrin- 
sic value,  27-30 ;  on  the  nature  of 
the  organism,  70  n.,  77  n. ;  his 
phenomenalism,  118-19,  131-3, 
135,  153,  158-60,  163-4;  on  the 
argument  from  design,  322,  324- 
5,  328-30. 

Kapila,  200  n. 

Keats,  29,  127,  129,  256,  278. 

Kelvin,  Lord,  97,  300. 


440 


INDEX 


Kidd,  Benjamin,  63-4. 
Kipling,  R.,  142. 
Kropotkin,  84  n. 

Ladd,  Professor  G.  T.,  42  n. 

Lange,  F.  A.,  51-4,  81,  149. 

Lankester,  Sir  E.  Ray,  163. 

Laurie,  S.  S.,  122-4,  127  n.,  174, 
177,  215. 

Leibnitz,  54,  179-81,  188,  237-8,  295, 
386. 

Le  Roy,  379-80. 

Lessing,  29. 

Levy-Bruhl,  151  n. 

Life,  question  of  origin  of,  94-7. 
See  Biology. 

Lindsay,  A.  D.,  49  n. 

Locke,  6,  49,  no,  112,  125  n.,  183, 
196,  237,  248,  272,  347,  403  n. ;  on 
the  distinction  betwixt  man  and 
brutes,  100-1 ;  on  knowledge 
and  reality,  116-18,  158-60;  on 
the  existence  of  God,  249 ;  on  the 
consciousness  of  duration,  349- 
50,  354. 

Loeb,  J.,  73- 

Lotze,  108,  113,  174,  177,  282-3;  on 
naturalism  and  idealism,  42,  54- 
6,  58;  on  the  creation  of  finite 
selves,  99,  287 ;  on  the  secondary 
qualities,  120-1 ;  on  the  timeless- 
ness  of  truth,  345;  on  present, 
past,  and  future,  376. 

Lucretius,  105,  259. 

McGilvary,  Professor  E.  B.,  353  n., 

363-5- 

Mackenzie,  Professor  J.  S.,  343- 
McTaggart,  J.  M.  E.,  6  n.,  19,  257, 

321,  343  n.,  387,  391-3- 

Malthus,  83. 

Mansel,  7. 

Marett,  R.  R.,  391  n. 

Marlowe,  243. 

Martineau,  36-7,  53.  254,  257-8,  3"- 

Materialism,  40-1,  51,  81-2,  89,  105. 
See  Naturalism. 

Maxwell,  Clerk,  78. 

Mazzini,  142. 

Mechanism  v.  purpose,  Lotze  on, 
54;  Kant  on,  70  n.,  76,  77  n. ; 
mechanistic  explanation  in  bi- 
ology, 70-7. 

Meliorism,  382,  394-6. 

Mentalism,  190-204. 


Metaphysics,  Comte's  idea  of,  135- 
6 ;  agnostic  travesty  of,  163-4. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  19,  94-5,  134 ;  on  design 
and  a  limited  God,  324-5,  401-3, 
405-6. 

Mind-stuff,  182. 

Mind  and  Body,  99,  124-6. 

Moberly,  W.  H.,  338. 

Monadism,  179-89,  203-4. 

Monism,  see  Absolutism. 

Monism  (popular  scientific),  181. 

Moore,  Professor  A.  W.,  238  n. 

Morality  and  the  idea  of  intrinsic 
value,  26-8;  Kant's  treatment  of 
the  postulates  of  morality,  31-5 ; 
nature  and  morality,  26,  83-5, 
132,  146-9 ;  religion  and  morality, 
difference  of  attitude,  394-6. 

Morgan,  Professor  Lloyd,  92,  98-9. 

Mozley,  J.  B.,  268  n. 

Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  42  n. 

Naturalism  and  idealism  con- 
trasted, 39-42;  the  naturalistic 
controversy  during  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Lecture  III  pas- 
sim ;  the  true  answer  to  natural- 
ism, 65 ;  ambiguity  of  the  term, 
88;  the  lower  and  the  higher 
naturalism,  Lecture  V  passim, 
209-10. 

Natural  Realism,  in  Reid  and 
Hamilton,  124-6. 

Natural  Selection,  81-2,  84;  and 
purpose,  327-8. 

Nature  and  morality,  26,  83-5,  132, 
146-9,  212-13 ;  nature  as  a  realm 
of  law,  178,  187-8;  the  instru- 
mental or  mediating  function  of 
nature,  200-1,  308;  nature  and 
the  absolute,  202. 

Neo-Kantianism,  in  Lange,  51-3. 

Neo-Realism,  112,  191. 

Neo-Vitalism,  71-6;  defective 
statements  criticised,  77-80. 

Newton,  49,  153,  238,  405. 

Nietzsche,  30,  8^,  88,  175,  268,  414- 

Non-contradiction,  as  the  criterion 
of  value,  227. 

Noumenon,  the  quest  of  the  mythi- 
cal, 160-4. 

Numerical  identity,  266-7. 

Omnipotence,  conception  of,  400-5, 
412,  417. 


INDEX 


441 


Ontological  argument,  Hume's 
treatment  of,  8-9;  Kant's  criti- 
cisms, 8,  240;  true  meaning  of, 
240-1. 

Orders  or  levels  of  existence,  92- 
108. 

Organic  relations  of  nature  and 
mind,  122-7,  146-9,  178-9,  210-13. 

Organism,  action  of,  not  describ- 
able  in  terms  of  mechanism,  72- 
7- 

Origen,  304,  307-8. 

Ostwald,  108  n. 

Overstreet,  Professor  H.  A.,  238  n. 

Paley,  12. 

Pan-psychism,  178-89. 

Pantheism,  the  lower,  219,  253. 

Parmenides,  6  n.,  173,  342,  381. 

Pascal,  47,  137. 

Pathetic  fallacy,  128  n. 

Pearson,  Karl,  72  n.,  84,  92  n. 

Peirce,  C.  S.f  184-7. 

Perry,  Professor  R.  B.,  223-4. 

Personality,  as  a  formed  will,  291 ; 
place  of,  in  Greek  and  in  Chris- 
tian thought,  291,  307. 

Personal  Idealism,  225. 

Pessimism,   17-18,  27,  147- 

Phenomenon  and  noumenon,  160- 
3- 

Philo,  313- 

Philosophy,  as  criticism  of  cate- 
gories, 67,  108;  the  relation  of 
philosophy  to  experience,  67. 

Picton,  J.  Allanson,  173. 

Planes  of  experience,  92-108. 

Plato,  236,  239,  259,  333,  342,  400, 
415;  on  creation,  305-6,  308-9; 
on  the  Good,  55,  181,  3?8;  on 
time  and  the  timeless,  154, 
303  n.,  345-6,  360,  365. 

Pleasure  or  happiness  not  the  end 
of  the  universe,  27,  403,  406-7, 
411. 

Plotinus,  313. 

Pluralism,  Professor  Ward  on, 
95,  183-4;  Professor  Howison's, 
315-21,  386;  William  James's, 
393-8. 

Pope,  220,  253. 

Positivism,  see  Comte  and  Hu- 
manity, Religion  of. 

Potentiality,  the  meaning  of,  105-7. 

Pragmatism,  22,  112,  225,  238. 

Present,  the  specious,  352-3;  the 


living  present,  369-70;  the  mere 
present,  376. 

Prichard,  H.  A.,  112. 

Proclus,  313. 

Progress,  predicable  of  parts,  not 
of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  383. 

Purpose,  characteristics  of  finite 
purpose,  323-4;  Professor  Bo- 
sanquet  on  teleology  and  pur- 
pose, 323,  335-8;  the  idea  passes 
into  that  of  a  systematic  and  in- 
telligible whole,  328-31 ;  purpose 
and  the  idea  of  satisfaction  or 
value,  332-5 ;  Spinoza  on  pur- 
pose, 332-3,  339- 

Rashdall,  Dean,  distinction  be- 
tween God  and  the  Absolute, 
387-91,  392  n.,  407  n. 

Realism,  Professor  Laurie's  state- 
ment of  philosophical,  122-4. 
See  also  Natural  Realism,  Neo- 
Realism. 

Reason,  attacks  on,  62-3 ;  reason 
and  association  distinguished, 
100-3. 

Reflex  action,  73-4. 

Reid,  Thomas,  124,  191,  349-51. 

Reinke's  theory  of  '  dominants  ', 
77,  80  n. 

Relatedness  distinguished  from 
Relativity,  116,  123,  126,  164,  211- 
12. 

Relevancy  of  response,  186-7. 

Religion  and  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, 137,  237-8,  252,  259, 
289-91. 

Renan,  E.,  89  n. 

Renouvier,  C,  374. 

Representationism,  116-18,  201. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  243  n. 

Ritschl,  A.,  56-8. 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  87,  35O. 

Royce,  J.,  279,  342,  354-5,  364  n., 
417- 

Satisfaction  and  value,  30;  the 
argument  from  '  needs '  to  their 
satisfaction,  61 ;  Mr.  Bradley's 
claim  that '  our  main  wants  must 
all  find  satisfaction ',  233-5 ',  sat- 
isfaction inseparable  from  cona- 
tion, 332-40;  not  to  be  identified 
with  pleasure,  or  even  with  hap- 
piness, 407. 

Scepticism,  as  a  basis  of  faith,  7; 


442 


INDEX 


Mr.  Bal  four's  scepticism  com- 
pared with  Hume's,  60. 

Schafer,  Sir  Edward,  96  n. 

Schiller,  52,  296. 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  225. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  129  n. 

Secondary  qualities,  in  Locke  and 
Berkeley,  117;  their  objectivity, 
120-4. 

Seeley,  Sir  John,  144. 

Self,  false  notions  of  the,  257 ;  Dr. 
McTaggart's  view  of  selves  as 
substances  existing  in  their  own 
right,  391 ;  Professor  Bosanquet 
on  the  '  formal  distinctness  '  and 
the  possible  blending  or  merging 
of  selves,  261-4,  on  the  '  re-dis- 
tribution '  of  finite  selves  in  the 
Absolute,  281-2;  Mr.  Bradley's 
metaphors  in  the  same  refer- 
ence, 280-1;  selves  share  a  com- 
mon content,  but  are  unique 
wholes  of  content,  263,  266-8; 
'adjectival' theory  of  the  self, 
271-4;  not  a  complex  group  of 
universals,  283 ;  the  origin  of 
finite  centres,  285-8,  293 ;  testi- 
mony of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness to  the  relative  independence 
or  '  otherness '  of  the  selves, 
289-90. 

Self-sacrifice,  294,  410-12. 

Shakespeare,  142,  167,  362,  372 ;  the 
world  of  Shakespeare's  trage- 
dies, 223-4. 

Shekinah,  man  the  true,  157. 

Shelley,  269. 

Sidgwick,  Henry,  39,  191. 

Simpson,  Professor  J.  Y.,  104. 

Smith,  Sir  George  Adam,  43-4. 

Society  ('the  social  whole')  and 
the  individual,  258,  265-6, 
296-7. 

Soul-making,  29,  256,  260,  278. 

Space  and  time  as  principia  indi- 
viduationis,  267,  304-5. 

Span  of  consciousness,  352-3. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  30,  84,  99;  on 
life,  94,  99 ;  on  the  nature  of  ex- 
planation, 92-3 ;  agnosticism  and 
the  unknowable,  7,  51,  58-9,  164- 
76,  214. 

Spinoza,  6  n.,  34,  49,  173,  256,  272, 
2Q1,  339;  on  cause  as  reason, 
301-2;  on  degrees  of  perfection, 
221-2 ;  the  relation  of  the  world 


to  God,  304,  314 ;  the  intellectual 
love  of  God,  291,  332-3. 

Statistical  results,  Professor  Ward 
and  Professor  Bosanquet  on, 
186-7. 

Stephen,  Sir  James  F.,  168-9. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  268. 

Stirling,  J.  H.,  44-5,  96,  118,  121, 
163. 

Stout,  Professor  G.  F.,  270,  273  n., 
277  n. 

Streeter,  Rev.  B.  H.,  409-10  n. 

Struggle  for  existence,  over-em- 
phasized, 83-4. 

Substance,  the  Aristotelian  and 
the  Spinozistic  sense  of,  272, 
281 ;  substance  and  qualities, 
162. 

Survival  of  the  fittest,  in  Hume, 
13- 

Swinburne,  140  n.,  238. 

Taylor,  Professor  A.  E.,  190  n., 
270,  355  n.,  360. 

Teleology,  Lecture  XVII  passim, 
358-60. 

Tennyson,  35,  40,  44,  47,  I",  ISO, 
293  n.,  294,  348-9,  363-4,  412. 

Theism,  defined  by  Professor 
Flint,  399 ;  Hume's  theism,  14-16, 
20-3 ;  Kant's  theistic  postulate, 
34-7 ;  differentia  between  a  theis- 
tic and  a  non-theistic  doctrine, 
340;  idea  of  God  in  traditional 
theism,  302-4,  340,  399,  408-9. 

Thomson,  Professor  J.  Arthur, 
72  n.,  77  n.,  84,  108  n. 

Time,  mathematical,  as  mere  suc- 
cession, 349;  primitive  con- 
sciousness of  duration,  350-3 ; 
time  transcended  in  teleological 
explanation  and  in  an  artistic 
whole,  358-62;  transcended,  yet 
retained,  in  the  Absolute,  363 ; 
time  as  principium  indiyidua- 
tionis,  267,  364-5 ;  spatialized 
time  and  the  illusion  of  deter- 
minism, 367-70. 

Timelessness  of  truths,  344-7- 

Transcendence     and     immanence, 

253-5- 
Transition  from  one  order  of  facts 

to  another,  94-108,  209-10. 
Trendelenburg,  A.,  331. 
Trinity,  the  doctrine  of  the,  313, 

410. 


INDEX 


443 


Truth  as  the  whole,  97,  106-7,  109, 

154-6,  177,  215,  331-2,  362. 
Tylor,  Sir  E.  B.,  298. 
Tyndall,  John,  105. 

Ulrici,  304-5,  3io. 

Ultra-rational,  appeal  to  the,  64. 

Uniqueness  of  the  individual, 
267-9. 

Universal  Consciousness  (or  the 
All-knower),  192-200,  397-8. 

Unknowable,  the,  58,  164-8;  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  on  the  Un- 
knowable, 169. 

Unpredictability  of  the  future, 
370-5- 

Vaihinger,  H.,  53. 
Validity  of  truths,  345-7- 
Value,    idea    of    intrinsic,    27-30; 
judgments  of  value,  40-1,  56-7, 


223;  cognition  and  value,  113- 
14;  criterion  of  value,  Lecture 
XII  passim;  satisfaction,  cona- 
tion, and  value,  332-8. 
Vitalism,  70.  See  also  Neo-Vi- 
talism. 

Wallace,  W.,  89-90,  103,  104  n. 

Ward,  Professor  James,  95  n.,  103, 
183-8,  387-8. 

Will,  as  the  complement  of  intelli- 
gence, 339;  the  spiritual  will  as 
the  concrete  personality,  291. 

Windelband,  W.,  39,  291  n.,  306. 

Wordsworth,  25,  128-9,  204,  251, 
254,  268,  295. 

World  organic  to  God,  295,  304-5, 
309-10,  315-16,  412,  414. 

Worth,  see  Value. 

Zeno,  the  paradoxes  of,  367. 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


SCOTTISH    PHILOSOPHY 

A  Comparison  of  the  Scottish  and  German  Answers  to  Hume. 

italfour  pfjilosoptjieal  lectured. 

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